Young children are being traumatised while held at a Gatwick airport deportation centre that should be closed down, a watchdog has found.
The independent monitoring board (IMB) also said the children’s parents were being subjected to “callous treatment and unnecessary suffering” because of the Home Office’s lengthy decision-making process over removals.
It follows an examination of conditions within the family detention unit pre-departure accommodation, known as the Family PDA, at the UK’s second-busiest airport.
Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, plans to increase detention capacity within the UK as part of a push to achieve the highest rate of deportations since 2018.
After an assessment of facilities and the treatment of children at the Gatwick unit, which provides accommodation for two families facing deportation, the monitoring board found:
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Children are witnessing or overhearing their parents’ “considerable distress” at their expected deportation, despite staff efforts to shield them.
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Children are being asked by staff to translate for their distraught parents, despite having been taken from their homes and facing removal to a country they may know very little about.
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The use of the Family PDA may prolong or add to trauma already experienced, particularly for children.
In one particularly distressing incident, a mother and her three children, aged five, four and two, were detained in the Family PDA for nearly a week after a failed attempt at removal. By the time of a second attempt to remove the family, the mother had had a positive pregnancy test but staff still attempted to go ahead with the deportation.
Before the removal was cancelled, the mother, who claimed her children’s lives would be in danger if they were deported, sat naked in a toilet cubicle for approximately four hours, refusing to engage with escorts.
“The board feels that the Home Office decision-making process resulted in callous treatment and unnecessary suffering for the mother, with the impact on her three young children unknown,” the report said.
The Family PDA forms part of the Gatwick immigration removal site that includes the Brook House deportation centre.
Last year, the Brook House inquiry report detailed 19 serious incidents during which detainees at the centre were abused by staff, after an undercover investigation by the BBC’s Panorama. Last month, the inquiry’s chair, Kate Eves, said the government had agreed to only one of her 33 recommendations.
The chair of the Family PDA board, Neil Beer, said: “We have seen children taking on responsibilities beyond their years. The board’s view is that no child should be put at risk by the kind of experience endured by those detained.”
A Home Office spokesperson said: “It is vital that all stages of the removal process are conducted with dignity. That is why we are fully committed to continuously improving our immigration detention facilities and providing a service which prioritises people’s safety and wellbeing. The Home Office will carefully consider the findings of this report.”
In a separate development, prison inspectors have found that HMP Manchester is in urgent need of improvement after finding “catastrophic levels” of drugs, organised crime, high rates of violence and a rat infestation. The facility, commonly known as Strangeways, was found by HM Inspectorate of Prisons to be the most violent of all adult men’s prisons in England and Wales, with the highest rate of serious assaults.
In an urgent notification letter sent to the justice secretary, Shabana Mahmood, the chief inspector of prisons, Charlie Taylor, said the number of weapons and illicit items found was among the highest of all adult men’s prisons and 39% of prisoners had tested positive for drug use in the past 12 months.
HMP Manchester, which houses category A and B prisoners, was the scene of the longest prison riot in British history, lasting from 1 April to 25 April 1990.
The prisons minister, James Timpson, said an action plan to deliver urgent improvements would be published in the coming weeks.
