The Home Office took part in a pandemic contingency exercise at an immigration removal centre as early as January, it has emerged, prompting questions about how much the government knew about the forecast scale of the Covid-19 outbreak. Sarah Burnett, the business operations director for justice and immigration at Serco, told MPs that the exercise took place at the Yarl’s Wood immigration centre with the involvement of the Home Office and Northamptonshire healthcare trust.
Addressing the home affairs select committee, Burnett said the exercise allowed those involved to ensure they had sufficient stocks of personal protection equipment (PPE). Colin Dobell, the managing director at Mitie Care & Custody, similarly told the committee that a pandemic contingency exercise took place with the Home Office at the Heathrow immigration removal centre (IRC) in February, allowing it to start reducing the numbers in detention in early March. The Labour MP Stephen Doughty asked the pair if they were surprised that the formal imposition of lockdown conditions did not happen until 23 March. Dobell replied: “We were communicating with Home Office all the way through it. It was clear from late February into early March what the strategy would be, which was really to reduce the number of detainees in the IRC. “We saw that take effect from early March, so from 8 March onwards the numbers in detention started to reduce dramatically.” The committee also heard evidence from providers of asylum seeker accommodation at Clearsprings Ready Homes and Mears Group, saying testing was not available for their service users despite hundreds of them isolating and living in accommodation with shared areas. Taking questions from the Conservative MP Laura Farris, Burnett said: “At Yarl’s Wood we held a full pandemic contingency planning exercise at the end of January, which ensured we were as prepared as we could be.” She added: “This was done at our instigation but with the Home Office and our healthcare partners Northampton healthcare trust. We worked on that as a tripartite plan which enabled us to get to a position where we could ensure we had sufficient stocks of PPE for example but also to redesign the regime to ensure we could continue to deliver essential services while maintaining the social distancing controls.” A Home Office spokesperson said: “There is nothing unusual in immigration removal centres having contingency plans in place for the spread of communicable diseases and these are tested on a regular basis. Immigration removal centres are following all Public Health England advice and if a detainee presents as symptomatic they have access to tests and appropriate medical care.” After the hearing, Doughty said: “It was deeply concerning to hear that many residents and even staff across the asylum accommodation system do not appear to have been able to access testing, despite large numbers becoming symptomatic, which itself is unsurprising given the nature of shared accommodation. “It was also revealing that providers appear to have been asked to carry out more extensive pandemic planning from January onwards. This suggests that the Home Office internally knew that the pandemic was likely to worsen and spread in the UK and throws up yet more questions about who knew what, when, and why these insights did not lead to changes in other policies in other areas of Home Office work.”