Bell Ribeiro-Addy
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Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Clapham and Brixton Hill) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Jeremy. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East (Andy McDonald) for securing the debate.
As the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on immigration detention, I want to raise the deeply troubling subject of the outsourcing of the management of immigration removal centres to private companies. I do not believe in Government outsourcing for public services —I struggle to think of an example that demonstrates good value for money—yet our asylum system, and particularly immigration removal centres, is being run for profit.
In 2019, the Conservative Government awarded asylum contracts worth £4 billion for 10 years to just three companies: Serco, Mears and Clearsprings Ready Homes, each of which raked in millions. Although some might point to the profit-sharing agreement that they are meant to have with the Government, the threshold for payback has not been disclosed. A freedom of information request to the Home Office revealed that not a penny of profit has actually gone back to the Treasury under that agreement.
We would hope that those companies were at least providing a good service, but that is not the case. We have seen reports of several deaths, suicides and suicide attempts at those facilities. Almost every single one of the removal centres operated by those companies have seen numerous recorded cases of overcrowding, hostile and unsanitary conditions, and mistreatment and abuse of detainees, both physical and psychological. I have seen some of those conditions for myself. Almost every one of the companies have had severe accusations of mismanagement levelled against them, backed up by hard evidence.
I do not believe that our asylum process should be run for profit, and I certainly do not believe that companies doing a shoddy job should continue to be handed lucrative contracts while making the lives of some of the most vulnerable people in this country absolutely miserable. I urge the Government to review those contracts, and if they are not willing to bring the entire asylum system in house, they should at least revoke the contracts of the awful companies that I have listed.