Home Office Food Provision Leaving Some Asylum Seekers Malnourished
Food provided to asylum seekers by Home Office contractors is of such poor quality that some people are ending up malnourished in hospital, a report has found. The paper found that it was difficult or impossible to meet nutritional needs and some people ended up in hospital with nutrition-related conditions. Cases of malnutrition among children and diabetes among adults were identified.
Food poisoning, weight loss and diabetes were particular problems and there were reports of children “crying with hunger”. Some children lost significant amounts of weight and were not meeting their developmental milestones. A lot of food ended up being binned and when fruit was provided, it was often already rotting and attracting flies. Hairs, mould and insects were found in food and sometimes raw or undercooked meat and chicken were served. Food such as yoghurt was sometimes provided after it had passed its sell-by date. Particular concerns were raised about infant feeding and parents’ inability to access facilities to sterilise bottles.
Tuesday’s paper, titled Food Experiences of People Seeking Asylum in London: Areas for Local Action, surveyed people seeking asylum across London along with representatives from 18 London boroughs, health professionals, academics, voluntary sector organisations and the Greater London Authority. The research was carried out between October 2023 and February 2024.
Reasd more: Diane Taylor, Guardian, https://shorturl.at/ipqA4
HO Must Release Data on Five People Who Died inAsylum-Seeker Accommodation
According to its data at the time, five people died in the Home Office’s outsourced asylum-seeker accommodation in the first six months of 2023. Suicide was listed as the cause of death for one of the deceased. This happened in March in the Northwest of England. The Home Office’s accommodation there is run by Serco. The rest of the deaths were listed as “cause to be confirmed.”
Two people died in accommodations in the South of England, which are run by Clearsprings Ready Homes. One died in April; the other in June. One person died in March while housed by Serco in the Midlands and East of England. Another person died in March in Scotland, where Mears Group has been outsourced to run asylum-seeker accommodation.
“It’s been three years since the current asylum policy of refusing to take responsibility for tens of thousands of people’s claims began, but the government still appears to have nothing in place to monitor the true impact of this dire policy,” Amnesty International UK’s refugee and migrant rights director Steve Valdez-Symonds told The Civil Fleet.
“With a substantial rise in fatalities in the asylum system already identified, a bare minimum response would have been to record and assess the number and circumstances of these deaths.
Read more: Freemovement, https://shorturl.at/duv14
Asylum Report Reveals Mishandling of Cases, Secret Ministerial Directions
This inspection looked at asylum decision making since the implementation of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022. I have outlined some of the key points below, particularly relating to backlog clearance, inadmissibility and quality assurance.
The following recommendations were made:
1 Previous inspection recommendations a) Introduce, as a matter of urgency, a published service standard for deciding asylum claims.
2 Vulnerability and safeguarding a) Identify vulnerable claimants in the asylum work in progress (WIP) queue and prioritise their claims.
3 Inadmissibility a) Review the inadmissibility WIP (including the Migration and Economic Development Partnership (MEDP) cohort) to ensure that only claimants who have a realistic prospect of removal from the UK are considered under the process. b) Ensure claimants are informed in writing when their claim is referred for consideration under the inadmissibility or MEDP process.
4 Training a) Confirm and implement the delineation of decision maker training and consolidation responsibilities between the training team and decision-making units. b) Use feedback from decision-making units and stakeholders to continually review and update the training provided to Asylum Operations staff.
5 Management information and data a) Implement the routine collection of data on vulnerability and protected characteristics to inform equality impact assessments and the Home Office’s understanding of how policies impact protected groups. b) Streamline the collation of management information to provide a single source of accurate and real-time data.
6 Quality assurance a) Ensure that routine quality assurance assessments are carried out on all asylum interviews and decisions, including withdrawn claims since December 2022, to ensure the 3.5% target is met.
Conclusion: The Home Office states that it has accepted or partially accepted all six of these recommendations. Compliance even with recommendations that have been accepted has historically been patchy at best, and often poor.
Read more: Freemovement, https://shorturl.at/CDGRZ
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Home Office to Accept Calls for Inquiry Into Asylum Seeker Centre
The Home Office is to concede to demands for a statutory inquiry into alleged assaults and mistreatment of asylum seekers at Manston processing centre, Whitehall sources have told the Guardian. The move comes after the government spent a year fighting off demands in the courts for an independent figure to investigate chaos, which led to claims of violence, drug dealing and filthy conditions at the Kent camp. It could lead to the former home secretaries Priti Patel and Suella Braverman being compelled to give evidence over the political decisions that led to overcrowded conditions in 2022. Sources have claimed that the government was forced to drop its opposition to an inquiry after the decision not to reappoint David Neal, the borders watchdog. He was due to contribute in advance of a judicial review hearing on 21 March but his evidence remained incomplete after he was sacked from office last month.
The decision to concede to a public inquiry is expected to raise questions over why the government has wasted public money defending a judicial review. Lawyers for asylum seekers have demanded that the statutory inquiry must include powers to compel the production of documents, attendance of witnesses, public hearings and funded legal representation. Manston, just outside Ramsgate, accommodates adults and children who arrive on small boats in a series of marquees. In the autumn of 2022 the facilities were built to house 1,600 people for a maximum of 24 hours. But conditions deteriorated with up to 4,100 people held there, many for several weeks.
Read more: Rajeev Syal, Guardian, https://shorturl.at/yJKNY
‘Dysfunctional’ Home Office in Need Of Reform, Sacked Borders Watchdog Says
The Home Office is “dysfunctional” and in desperate need of reform, the sacked borders watchdog David Neal has said in his latest broadside against the government. Mr Neal was fired from his role as chief inspector of borders and immigration last month after claiming that Border Force had allowed “high-risk” aircraft to land in the UK without security checks, which the Home Office denied.
He continues to be an outspoken critic of the department and says he “paid the price” for voicing his concerns and that his conscience remains “absolutely clear”. James Cleverly, the home secretary, said Mr Neal had breached the terms of his appointment and he had lost confidence in him.In a BBC interview, Mr Neal said failings in the immigration system go “right to the top” of the Home Office. He told The Today Podcast: “The Home Office is dysfunctional, the Home Office needs reform.”
Read more: BBC, https://shorturl.at/gqIX8
Police Officer Drags and Stamps on Homeless Refugee
Footage of a police officer dragging a homeless refugee and stamping on them has circulated online. The video shows an officer of the Greater Manchester police seizing a homeless person’s sleeping bag and dragging it across the floor, with them still inside. The officer then goes on to intentionally tread on them. The man, who wishes to remain anonymous, stated in a BBC News interview ‘I was telling her I need to sleep. But she stamped on my stomach with her foot. It caused me problems – I had a fever and in the following hours I had blood in my urine.’ He required hospital treatment.
The attack took place outside Manchester Town Hall, where the man slept. The Town Hall is where homelessness support systems are located. This is one example of several, where homeless people have faced abuse in recent months. A man in Birmingham was set on fire in November. McDonald’s security guards doused a rough sleeper and his belongings with water in London in December. The Metropolitan Police also ‘unlawfully’ detained a homeless pensioner and destroyed his belongings, resulting in legal action.
Read more: Amelia Sharples, Justice Gap, https://shorturl.at/dtyMY
“Near Breaking Point”: Urgent Changes Needed To Support Victims Of Modern Slavery
Kalayaan, a small but mighty charity that works to provide advice, advocacy and support services in the UK for migrant domestic workers have recently updated their 2023 report on the state of the system for identifying victims of modern slavery, with 2024’s National Referral Mechanism: Near Breaking Point. The particular problem that they highlight and are seeking to change is the need for the government to train and recruit more First Responder organisations (these are the ones that are able to refer a potential victim into the National Referral Mechanism to have their trafficking case considered).
The Nationality and Borders Act 2022 has had an impact here, as the raised evidential requirements for the first stage (reasonable grounds) decision mean that each case requires much more work. The increase in negative reasonable grounds decisions has meant that more reconsideration requests need to be prepared and submitted. All of this additional work leaves less resource to help those who need to enter the system.
Case studies are provided to highlight the dangerous situations that some victims are in as a result of the inability to find a First Responder to get them into the system and access the support that they need and are entitled to.
Read more: Freemovement, https://shorturl.at/dlP23
Babies Born to Refugees After Their Grant of Status
A guidance change made in July 2023 is affecting the ability of the new-born babies of refugees to obtain refugee status. This is an issue that affects a limited group of people, namely those who have been granted refugee leave for five years, and have a child born in the UK during this period. However the impact can be significant as formal refugee status is important in terms of security and recognition of status, as well as rights like obtaining a convention travel document.
The changes in approach to child dependants in asylum claims were made following the Supreme Court case of G v G[2021] UKSC 9. The decision related to a child in the asylum system in the UK who was also subject to child abduction proceedings under the Hague Convention. Although the main thrust of the decision related to the interaction between refugee and abduction proceedings, it has had a significant impact on families in the UK claiming asylum.
Shortly after the decision in G v G, the Home Office introduced the concept of a ‘Family Asylum Claim’(covered here). Under this process, a family’s asylum claim is dealt with together, although each member of the family is a claimant in their own right and if the claim is successful they will each be granted refugee status.
Read more: Freemovement, https://shorturl.at/fnqR3
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