CONCLUSIONES Y RECOMENDACIONES

abuse and substandard living conditions asylum seekers faced in areas of Liverpool following dispersal (Sales, 2002: p. 465). Citing early research into the dispersal experiences of asylum seekers throughout the country, Phillips (2006) explains that housing has often been marked by overcrowding and poor conditions (Garvie, 2001 and Wilson, 2001 in Phillips, 2006: p. 545). The Shelter research document Phillips cites, Far From Home, provides an analysis of asylum seekers’ experiences within the private rented sector. Garvie (2001) uses the 1996 English House Condition Survey to address the general unsuitability of private rented housing across the United Kingdom, explaining that ‘30 per cent of private tenants live in housing conditions which are unfit, in substantial disrepair or lack modern facilities’ (Garvie, 2001: p. 31). The impact on asylum seekers, Garvie states, is substantial due to preexisting physical or psychological harms many have endured prior to arrival. She also indicates that asylum seekers may not know the ‘standards of accommodation they should expect’ (ibid., p. 32). These sorts of issues highlight problems of the Home Office’s dispersed housing programme under a previous regime. Following the cessation of contracts between the Home Office and regional consortia providing housing for destitute asylum seekers, a new model was adopted, which placed significant emphasis on corporate competition and competing firms’ ability to deliver cost-savings to the delivery of housing services. By early 2012, the ‘preferred bidders’ for the COMPASS programme included G4S and Serco, two private security firms with no history of housing provision that had each established themselves as providers of detention and transportation services in separate contracts with the UK government. The degree to which the humanitarian concerns related to the dispersal programme would decrease, remain or intensify would not be fully apparent until after the transition to COMPASS was complete nearly a year later.!

!

4.2 COMPASS: Securitising and marketising asylum service provision!

!

! The asylum housing contracts between the Home Office, local authorities, housing

associations and private landlords first established in 2000 were fixed-term. After the first five years, new contracts were agreed with many of the same providers, though rates were lowered. In 2005, the Labour government renegotiated the contracts on the basis that fewer asylum seekers were entering the country and that the Home Office was coming to initial decisions more speedily. Tony McNulty, then Minister of State for Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality, said:!

‘As as a result of these achievement we are renegotiating contracts, saving £37m in 2004/2005 and remain on track to cut asylum support costs by a third by the end of 2005.’!

(Tony McNulty, quoted in BBC News, 2005).!

!

The reduction in funding for asylum housing was also justified on the grounds that some private landlords were receiving money even when rooms were empty. In 2005, a Home Office investigation into the contracts was launched following allegations that one of the providers, Angel Group, was receiving money for the same properties from the Home Office and as subcontractors to Leeds city council (Pallister and Bowcott, 2005). The executive summary of the 2005 National Audit Office report analysing NASS provision for asylum seekers declared that ‘the contracts [NASS] let originally with accommodation providers in 2000-1 have not always proved to be value for money’; NASS aimed to achieve savings of ‘£37 million in payments in 2004-05’ (NAO, 2005: p. 2). While these circumstances provided the basis for renegotiating the contracts, the extended effects of reduced funding was increased strain on providers and local authorities already providing support. Shifts in providers also introduced concerns and stresses for asylum seekers who faced moves. For instance, the Home Office’s decision to end its contract with Safe Haven in Yorkshire and Humberside led to uncertain outcomes for nearly 1,500 asylum seekers dispersed in the region. In addition to redundancies, workers feared that the new contracts would lead to social instability and troubling experiences for asylum seekers. The manager of the North East Consortium of Asylum and Refugee Support Services expressed concern about ‘moving families that might have been in accommodation for as long as 10, 12 or 15 years’ and a director for the West Midlands Consortium described the adoption of new contracts as a ‘doomsday scenario’ (Ricketts, 2005).!

! The asylum housing landscape changed considerably in the lead-up to the 2010 contract negotiations. Given the reduced rates introduced in 2005, a number of local authorities sought sustained or increased funding in order to continue their asylum services. This was at odds with the government’s attempts to further reduce costs within the system and agreements began to deteriorate. In 2010, for instance, Birmingham City Council ended its contract with the Home Office expressing an interest to offload housing to private sector organisations. A rhetorical acknowledgement that the needs of British people should outweigh those of asylum seekers was also used to justify the abandonment of the contracts. A cabinet member for housing, John Lines, stated that the city needed to reserve its housing stock ‘for our own people’ (BBC News, 2010). The Home Office and Glasgow City Council could not agree to a deal when negotiating the contracts in 2010; a spokesperson claimed that the reduction in the number of asylum seekers to the city resulted in its inability to sustain its housing obligations at competitive

rates (Twinch, 2010). The renegotiation was part of a contractual agreement, which required UK Border Agency and Glasgow City Council to reexamine the contracts terms if the numbers of dispersed asylum seekers dropped below 3,198. As the terms could not be agreed, the contract was terminated effective 02 February 2011. The government stated that ‘contingency plans’ were arranged to negotiate with another provider in Glasgow, Ypeople (formerly YMCA), to carry on housing asylum seekers (Scottish Affairs Committee meeting, 2011). From 2010 to 2012, Ypeople continued accommodating asylum seekers until the COMPASS programme was finalised and implemented. In the North East of England, subcontractors carried the bulk of the housing provision through 2012. Jomast Developments, which defines itself as an ‘investment and regeneration specialist’ on its website (Jomast website 2015), continued housing asylum seekers in the

interim period; they were subsequently subcontracted by G4S under COMPASS.!

! By 2011, the Home Office was accepting bids from new prospective

accommodation providers under a new project title: the Commercial and Operational Managers Procuring Asylum Support Services (COMPASS). One of the aims of the new programme was to reduce the number of providers to reduce the 22 separate contracts in place with a total of thirteen suppliers across a variety of public and private sectors. It was a decision that the Public Accounts Committee later determined was ‘at variance with wider Government efforts to increase the use of small and medium size enterprise (SMEs) and to reduce dependency on a handful of larger suppliers’ (House of Commons, Public Accounts Committee Fifty-Fourth Report, 2014: s1(3)). In addition, the Public Accounts Committee suggested that excessive dependency on a small number of providers might result in greater risk for the government and the asylum seekers in its care. In the conclusion to its report, the committee declared:!

!

[The Home Office] no longer has the diversity of provision it once had, nor the specialist providers, and has fewer alternative options available if a contractor fails. Any failures by a single contractor under COMPASS would impact on a greater number of asylum seekers.!

(ibid.,Conclusions and recommendations, s2)!

!

These observations had the benefit of hindsight. By October 2013, the Home Affairs Committee on Asylum were ‘very concerned’ and ‘unimpressed’ with the conduct of COMPASS providers G4S and Serco (House of Commons Home Affairs Committee on Asylum, 2013a: para. 93). It is perhaps more significant that any dissenting voices that may have existed in 2010 and 2011 were not able to alter the trajectory of future asylum housing contracts. Instead, by December 2011, three private security firms - G4S, Serco and Reliance - were the ‘preferred bidders’ for the COMPASS contracts. During a ‘due

diligence’ period in which the UKBA assessed if there were any risks with awarding G4S with the asylum housing contract, the UKBA and representatives from G4S met with community members and academics in Sheffield to discuss concerns that a private security firm responsible for detaining and transporting asylum seekers was to be awarded a multi-million pound contract to house them. During this meeting on 24 February 2012 at the city’s Northern Refugee Centre, Stephen Small, Managing Director of Immigration & Borders at G4S, explained that the bidding process was comprised of two different sets of criteria: technical and financial. A 60 per cent weighting was attributed to the technical offerings of bidders, while 40 per cent was aimed at the financial competitiveness of the offers. Small stated that G4S was not the lowest bidder financially, but that it was seen as the most technically capable of reducing costs, such as utilities costs. As a large corporation, Small argued, G4S could exercise extensive purchasing power and leverage (Meeting, Sheffield Northern Refugee Centre, 24 February 2012).! ! During this meeting, I asked the G4S representatives how they might respond to perceptions that the company was acting as an arm of the UK government’s immigration strategy given its presence in other areas of immigration control. Stephen Small objected to any links made between the UKBA and G4S stating that the security firm was not in any way responsible for immigration decisions. He further explained that G4S was sensitive to asylum seekers’ perceptions and indicated that the firm had made efforts to minimise its visibility; G4S employees in direct contact with asylum seekers in COMPASS accommodation would not be wearing G4S uniforms, only ties bearing the company’s logo. Responding to another participant’s questions about the potential moves families would be expected to make during the transition to the COMPASS project and whether any risk assessments had been conducted with Local Safeguarding Children Boards (LSCBs), Andrew Gray, an accommodation manager with G4S, stated that special consideration would be given to families with children to limit moves where possible. However, both G4S and UKBA representatives stated that there existed no duty to consult with LSCBs and that any formal duties had been addressed within the terms of the contract. The meeting also revealed the neoliberal logic underpinning the decision to 4

extend offers to three private security firms. !

! While previous asylum housing agreements included contractors within the private

sector, there remained a social welfare element to the provision, particularly with the inclusion of local authorities who had historically been the bodies responsible for providing accommodation prior to the 1999 Immigration and Asylum Act. In excluding local Of the statutory requirements listed within Schedule 2 of the COMPASS project, section

4

1.1.3 states that ‘[t]he Provider shall comply with the duties imposed on them by section 55 of the Border, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009, and the children’s duty, to safeguard children from harm and promote their welfare’ (COMPASS Project, Schedule 2, Accommodation & Transport - Statement of Requirements: s1.1.3, p. 4).

authorities altogether from the contracts, the Home Office effectively provided a point of entry for the privatisation of social housing more generally. The first evidence of this was revealed in Stephen Small’s passing reference to an emerging ‘asylum market’ during the meeting. John Grayson, who was also in attendance, has referred to Small’s comment as a reflection of a multifaceted strategy on the part of the government to expose asylum seekers to an increasingly securitised environment while supporting the expansion of private sector control over abject communities. Grayson states that Small’s reference to ‘asylum markets’ reinforced ‘the view already held by some analysts that it is G4S’s intention to continue expanding its management of prisons, criminal justice and immigration “estates”, while managing a housing contract (with effectively no legal rights for tenants), and to use this dubious base to expand into the wider privatised housing market’ (Grayson, 2012). Further evidence supporting Grayson’s observation was revealed during oral evidence given in a Home Affairs Committee meeting on asylum housing. Stephen Small of G4S and Jeremy Stafford, former Serco Chief Executive of UK and Europe, were interviewed as part of the Home Affairs Committee on Asylum’s investigation into the COMPASS contracts on 25 June 2013. The committee chair, Keith Vaz, asked Stafford why Serco would ‘bother’ contracting its services under the terms of the COMPASS project if the firm was receiving just 21 pence in profits per asylum seeker per night, a claim Stafford made in an earlier response. Stafford replied:!

!

Because we are very focused on building an accommodation business and we believe that by taking on regions of the COMPASS service we could establish the right team to do that. We felt that we could establish a very good platform that we felt was scalable. You are probably aware that some of the services we develop in the United Kingdom we then go and take to other geographies. For example, the court escorting service we operate in London and the South East is operated in Western Australia. For us, we felt accommodation

management was an important development area.!

!

! ! (Stafford, quoted in House of Commons, 2013b)!

!

There are two notable aspects to this response. The first is a conspicuous absence: Stafford does not suggest any possible corporate objective for the care and wellbeing of asylum seekers. In fact, asylum seekers are not even mentioned. Second, the expansionist neoliberal logic is clearly evident, but it is telling that Stafford referred only to ‘accommodation management’ rather than ‘asylum accommodation management’ or indeed ‘prisoner accommodation management’. If asylum housing is to be the stepping stone for expansion into social housing more broadly, then concerns about the quality,

management and underlying ethic of something like the COMPASS programme has implications for citizens and non-citizens alike. In any case, it is worth exploring some of the initial trepidations asylum seekers and their advocates had in the period before transitioning to new providers and some of the possible foundations for those concerns.!

! Initial alarm expressed within the asylum support community following the

announcement of G4S and Serco as preferred bidders on the COMPASS contracts centred largely on four concerns: 1) the companies’ current contracts with the government to detain and transport asylum seekers; 2) perceived human rights abuses by representatives from both firms; 3) both companies’ inexperience in delivering large-scale housing provision; and 4) the market-driven (rather than socially focused) motivations for each firm’s entry into the COMPASS contracts. A fifth issue, incompetency, was a concern that existed prior to COMPASS, but was more defined following contractual failings and other public displays of ineptitude and fraud, such as G4S’s inability to meet its contractual obligations during the 2012 London Olympics and both firms’ cases of defrauding the government in overcharging for prisoner tracking tags. These are issues I will return to, but I will first address the concerns as they existed prior to the transition to

COMPASS.!

! G4S and Serco are each contracted by the government to carry out the

management of detention facilities around the United Kingdom and have both been involved in the transport of asylum seekers to and from detention upon arrival and to their deportations. The 1971 Immigration Act established detention as a key element to the management of immigrant populations. Discretion is afforded to individual immigration officers in the decision to grant or refuse entry and no ‘upper time limit on detention’ is specified (Silverman, 2012: p. 1138). As part of its delivery strategy, the Home Office extended the opportunity to manage these facilities to private firms as well as HM Prison Service. Of the twelve immigration removal centres in the United Kingdom operating at the time of writing, nine are privately operated. G4S manages two, Tinsley House and Brook House; Serco manages another two, Colnbrook and Yarl’s Wood. HM Prison Service operates three centres: Dover, Haslar and Morton Hall. Asylum seekers’ experiences in these facilities have been the focus of many research projects, academic analyses and advocacy efforts (see: Jackson, 2003; Silverman, 2012; Welch and Schuster, 2005; Weber, 2012; Tyler, 2006; Keller et al, 2003; Hassan, 2000; Freedman, 2010; Webber, 2011; Bosworth, 2008; Tyler, 2010; Stewart, 2005; Nandy, 2006; Giner, 2007; Athwal, 2010; Sales, 2002; Hintjens, 2012; Menz, 2009). In their cross-sectional questionnaire study of 67 asylum seekers living in UK detention facilities, Robjant, Robbins and Senior (2009) found ‘high levels of anxiety, depression, and PTSD symptoms’ amongst asylum seekers in immigration detention (Robjant et al, 2009: p. 275). Malloch and Stanley (2005) have highlighted the vulnerabilities of women living in mixed environments, given possible

prior histories of sexual violence (Amnesty International, 1999 in Malloch and Stanley, 2005: p. 62).!

! The incarceration of children in detention facilities has been particularly problematised. In her study of work conducted by the charity, Bail for Immigration Detainees, Anna Jackson (2003) provides examples of children’s experiences within

detention; in one case, a woman and toddler were held for four months before being released following the medical examiner’s determination that the child faced a ‘failure to thrive’ (Jackson, 2003: p. 120). The work of nation-wide advocacy groups, such as the End Child Detention Now (ECDN) campaign, have achieved some successes in illuminating the issue and in impacting policy. Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg declared in December 2010 that the practice of detaining children would end by May 2011. ECDN has also garnered the support of notable celebrities including Colin Firth and Russell Brand in calling for an end to child detention (ECDN website, 2015). Since 2009, there has been a significant reduction in the number of children in immigration detention. From its height of 1,119 children in detention in 2009, in 2015, the number had fallen to 99 (Home Office, 2014a; see Figure 1.3). Limitations to the amount of time children can be detained within pre-departure centres were introduced in the 2014 Immigration Act. Section 5 limits the individual detainment period of unaccompanied children to 24 hours and Section 6 restricts the detainment of families with children to a maximum of 72 hours or seven days. In her general observations of the conditions asylum seekers face in detention, Bosworth (2008) questions whether ‘it is fair or justifiable to utilise detention as

Figure 1.3: Children in UK immigration removal centres from 2009 to 2014 N u mb e r o f ch ild re n i n U K immi g ra ti o n detention 0 300 600 900 1200 Year 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 99 228 242 127 436 1119

Source: Detention data tables immigration statistics October to December 2014 (Home Office, 2014b).!

a means of border control, when, particularly given the complexities in determining asylum cases, such a strategy must perforce result in some innocent and even victimised parties being incarcerated’ (Gibney, 2004 cited in Bosworth, 2008: p. 207).!

! It remains necessary to distinguish between detention, dispersal and, to a lesser extent, deportation. Detention is ostensibly a statutory control on migrants deemed to be in the United Kingdom illegally. It represents a technique of state power that actively excludes migrants from society and operates as a key component of the state’s