Our Response to Labour’s Campsfield Announcement

Asylum Welcome remains opposed to this plan and continues to play an active role in the Coalition to Keep Campsfield Closed.

The Coalition issued a news release and announced an immediate protest at Carfax in Oxford on the evening of the announcement. This was attended by around 50 people, including Calum Miller, the MP for Bicester and Woodstock (where Campsfield is located), Green Party councillors, trade union representatives, and local residents.

It received coverage on the BBC and ITV.

We also spoke to BBC Radio Oxford and Heart FM to express our unhappiness at these plans.

What’s happening?

The last government put in place plans to refurbish and reopen Campsfield (Phase 1) and expand its capacity to around 400 (Phase 2). A contractor, Galliford Try, is at work on a £70m contract for Phase 1.

At the same time another former detention centre, at Haslar in Gosport, Hampshire, is also being reopened.

The last government said more detention places were needed to house people before they were moved to Rwanda.

The new Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, cancelled the Rwanda policy as being both ineffective and too costly.

However, she has now announced that deportations of people whose asylum claim has failed will be increased to 2018 levels (9,000 a year), and that 290 additional places at Campsfield and Haslar will still be needed for their detention.

This indicates Phase 1 will continue. There is no clarity about whether Phase 2 will go ahead.

Labour leaders at both the City and County Councils have expressed their ‘disappointment’ at the government’s plans to reopen the centre. The City Council “have a very longstanding policy of opposing Campsfield House’s use as a detention centre.”

Immigration Detention is Not the Answer

We recognise that not every asylum claim is going to be successful. What we object to is the overemphasis on enforcement and detention.

International evidence and our past experience, including previous involvement with Campsfield House, tell us that the following realities are entirely predictable (as the Home Office will also be aware):

• The people likely to be detained will be at risk of mental illness: distressed that their claim has failed; fearful of returning home; and anxious about their confinement, their separation from families, and their families’ future;
• Resources will be focused on their confinement and camp security, much more than on their welfare;
• There will be depression, self-harm, hunger strikes and a risk of suicide attempts;
• People will be detained who the Home Office has identified as not suitable for detention (i.e. people who have experienced torture and trafficking);
• The majority of people detained will be released back into the community, and many will experience cycles of detention and release;
• Access to legal representation will be far more difficult from detention;
• As there is no time limit on detention in the UK, unlike every other European country, some detainees will spend many months locked up with no idea of when they will be allowed to leave.

These were among the reasons that Campsfield was closed in 2018. There is every reason to fear that the same conditions and risks will recur.

Indeed, only last month HM Inspector of Prisons reported that in two immigration removal centres at Heathrow, two thirds of inmates felt unsafe and half said they were suicidal.

Physical detention is very expensive as well as harmful. That money could be spent more effectively on ‘alternatives to detention’, which have been piloted nationally and should now be followed up.

What’s next?

Going forward, the CKCC will be talking to a whole range of political parties and representatives, local supporters and the public, to strengthen the campaign and put pressure on the government to rethink.

Please sign and share our petition here, join the mailing list here and support the campaign on Instagram and X (Twitter).

As Oxford City Councillor Dr Hosnieh Djafari-Marbini put it: “Immigration detention and its circle of violence is inhumane, ineffective and makes a mockery of Oxford as a City of Sanctuary.”