The real distress at Yarl's Wood: The Guardian Comment is Free
Junior Home Office minister Meg Hillier MP is my parliamentary neighbour and a friend. But she has never visited Yarl's Wood detention centre. If she had, then I believe that she would never have signed off the letter, sent last week to every member of parliament, rubbishing the Guardian's report about desperate women detainees currently on hunger strike there.
Her letter condemned "current misreporting, based on inaccurate and fabricated statements". She went on that it "is irresponsible as it causes unnecessary distress to the women at Yarl's Wood, their family and friends".
But in truth, it is the conditions at Yarl's Wood that have caused "unnecessary distress" and driven women to go on hunger strike. I know this because I have visited Yarl's Wood. And I raised the issue of conditions there as far back as 2007 in an adjournment debate. This (as it happens) was responded to by Hillier in her capacity as a Home Office minister.
Poor conditions at Yarl's Wood are not fictions dreamt up by journalists. Nor have they invented the hunger strike. Journalists have spoken to at least 10 women there. And, although the ministers might query the details of some of their cases, the overall picture is very different from the one painted by the minister in her letter to colleagues.
The letter describes the healthcare at Yarl's Wood in glowing terms. But, in fact, it has long given cause for concern. This is partly because it is not directly provided by the NHS, as some of us have argued for. The children's commissioner for England said in his report on Yarl's Wood: "The delivery of healthcare must be reviewed, given the concerns we have raised from our visit. The concerns range from not keeping growth charts to not recognising or responding in a timely way to serious injury. Despite the appointment of a paediatric nurse there remains a lack of paediatric medical expertise. This should be considered high risk." And medical notes currently being collated by the Medical Justice Network also give a very different picture to the official version of conditions in Yarl's Wood.
The indefinite and administrative detention of children at Yarl's Wood is also a long-standing and underlying cause of unrest. In 2006 the inspector of prisons observed of Yarl's Wood: "Our most important concern … remained the detention of children." The all-party group on refugees in a report in July 2006 said that the detention of children "makes a mockery of children's rights legislation". And the joint committee on human rights, in a report on the treatment of asylum seekers in March 2007, found that the UK was in breach of its human rights obligations by detaining children.
The Children's Commissioner for England has been so alarmed about conditions at Yarl's Wood that he has returned three times in four years. In his latest report last month he noted some improvements but said, "arrest and detention are inherently damaging to children and Yarl's Wood is no place for a child". Ministers should not dismiss the hunger strike. The vulnerable women and children at Yarl's Wood deserve better.
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