A high court judge has granted two former immigration detainees permission to seek an independent public inquiry into claims of systemic abuse in an immigration removal centre (IRC).



Both men were featured in an undercover BBC Panorama broadcast filmed last September at Brook House IRC near Gatwick airport. The first detainee was filmed being throttled by a member of G4S staff.

G4S staff suspended from Brook House immigration centre over abuse claims Read more

Despite the findings, the Home Office recently awarded G4S a new contract to run Brook House for a further two years.

The programme revealed a culture of chaos with officials mocking, abusing and assaulting detainees, prompting G4S to order an independent review. Ten staff were suspended and one has been interviewed under police caution. Brook House’s director, Ben Saunders, resigned soon after the programme was aired.

The Home Office’s professional standards unit (PSU) conducted an internal inquiry into the abuse revealed by the undercover filming. Court documents in the proceedings on Tuesday reveal for the first time the Home Office’s findings that G4S’s treatment of the man who was throttled “degraded” him and amounted to “inhuman treatment”.

The report found that there was collusion by G4S staff not to record the events.

The undercover filming shows a G4S officer digging his fingers into the man’s neck and whispering in his ear: “Don’t move you fucking piece of shit I’m going to put you to fucking sleep.” The report said that those actions “did not involve proportionate use of force and was not in accordance with any approved control and restraint technique”.

Lisa Giovannetti QC, representing the Home Office, told the court that the department was already investigating the matter through the PSU. While she acknowledged that the PSU was inside the Home Office and that its reports were not made public, she said that the PSU was independent and that the fact-finding stage of the PSU report in respect of the individuals who have brought the high court challenge “has been undertaken with some thoroughness”.



Mr Justice Holman, who heard the application, said one of the factors that persuaded him to grant permission for a full judicial review was a letter to the court from the Equality and Human Rights Commission expressing a wish to intervene in the case.

“The documentary exposes a multitude of ill treatment and abuse against detainees at Brook House,” the commission’s letter to the high court states.

Lewis Kett, of Duncan Lewis Solicitors, representing the detainee who was throttled, said he was a victim of torture suffering from mental illness and was suicidal.

“Our client was a vulnerable and traumatised young man, not yet out of his teens, who had sought refuge in the UK to escape persecution in Egypt. What he did not expect was to be tortured and retraumatised by agents of the UK government who were supposed to be responsible for his care in detention.

“Detention staff at Brook House were only caught and punished because they were unaware of secret filming and accounts from detainees suggest this abuse could go much wider. The only way to get to the bottom of the facts and ensure abuse like this does not happen again is for a full forensic public inquiry.”

The second detainee’s legal team is questioning how the various inspection bodies, including Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons and the Independent Monitoring Board, missed the abuses revealed by Panorama when they conducted their own inspections into Brook House IRC.

Joanna Thomson of Deighton Pierce Glynn solicitors, representing the second detainee, said: “Panorama revealed shocking scenes of racial and physical abuse of detainees at the hands of G4S staff. It is the claimants’ case that only a public inquiry will discharge the home secretary’s duty under the Human Rights Act to properly investigate this systemic abuse.”

Holman ruled that the second detainee’s case should be joined to the first one.

G4S said its review would examine its own management, including how it “oversees the care and welfare of detainees” and the availability of drugs at the centre.

Emma Ginn, the coordinator of the charity Medical Justice, which works to improve the health of people in detention, said: “The continual inability of the Home Office, its contractors, HM Inspectorate of Prisons and the Independent Monitoring Board to identify these issues of concern highlights precisely why a public, independent process is required. Rather than holding G4S to account the Home Office has rewarded them with a further contract to run Brook House.”







