Another shambles as G4S is entrusted with running asylum seeker housing

(See the original article here, at Open Democracy/Our Kingdom )

While the world’s biggest security firm has suffered international humiliation over its mishandling of the London Olympics, another more modest piece of business has been unravelling in its hands. 

Back in June, when G4S was looking forward to making a big impression as lead security contractor to the London Olympics, the company signed off a less glamorous but more profitable piece of business – managing housing for thousands of asylum seekers in the north of England. The seven-year £211m contract with the UK Border Agency’s commercial arm COMPASS was especially welcome to G4S, which had lost a deportation escort contract with the UK Border Agency, after the death of Jimmy Mubenga in October 2010.

But the contract has not been plain sailing for the security giant, who have been harried by campaigners across Yorkshire working with asylum rights groups, outraged that a prison guard and immigration detention centre company can privatise the housing of around 1000 asylum seekers presently housed and supported by local councils.

Two groups — South Yorkshire Migration and Asylum Action Group (SYMAAG) and Why Refugee Women? — in May and June criticised  the chosen partner of G4S, private housing company UPM (United Property Management), for forcibly moving a mother and sick baby a hundred miles from Bradford to Doncaster. The UPM flat in Doncaster was condemned by the UKBA itself, but the mother and baby had to endure six weeks there before being rescued by the local children’s services department in Doncaster. UPM was dropped from the G4S contract.

On June 18 a rather rattled G4S announced through the UKBA that it was finally able to take on the asylum housing contract and would have four totally new housing companies as its partners: Cascade, Live Management, Mantel, and a charitable housing association, Target HA, based in Sheffield. Cascade did have some form in asylum housing, but apparently only briefly subcontracting for UPM and Kirklees council. Live Management, registered as a private company only since January 2012, had no form at all. Mantel, part of a commercial property company, was to play no part in the first stages of the contract. Only Target HA emerged as a housing provider with a history of local authority contracts for housing vulnerable people – in its case ex-offenders.

Target Housing as a fig leaf for G4S

For more than fifty years Yorkshire councils had provided housing for refugees. Now that was being handed over to the world’s biggest surveillance and detention company, with a well regarded local charity acting as front man and figleaf. Just as children’s charity Barnado’s rents its reputation to G4S and the Border Agency at the Cedars family detention centre, providing cover for the continued detention of children, Target Housing was to give a credible face to G4S, as it moved from its profitable asylum markets into the expanding markets for private capital in social housing.

It was a good choice; the CEO of Target was a Chilean refugee, Gino Toro, with personal experience of working for refugee housing associations. In early summer 2011 G4S had organised a competitive bidding process for voluntary sector housing providers. Target, like most voluntary organisations, and many specialist housing associations, had been badly hit by cuts in public expenditure, and a resulting drying up of contracts. In 2011 they had a bad year, they told the Charity Commission:

‘Given the economic climate and funding cuts one of our objectives was to avoid any compulsary (sic) staff redundancies’ (1)

Gino Toro says he won a sub contract from G4S in 2011 to house around 250 asylum seekers, in family groups in Sheffield, Hull and Derby. Target, according to Moro, underbid its rivals to win the contract estimated at £2.5 million. Their present total annual turnover is about £2 million, so the contract was important for Target’s survival.

So Target are now players in a game where privatisation means cutting staff costs and reducing service to ensure profits for lead organisation G4S. Target’s unqualified ‘Team Leader’ for their new asylum contract, will be paid the equivalent of £8 per hour gross, roughly what G4S casual employees recruited as guards for the Olympics were paid. Slimmed down staffing will mean vulnerable asylum seeker families will not get the support the councils have offered them.

The G4S assumption that buying a ‘social housing’ provider would scale down opposition in Sheffield totally backfired. Gino Moro was well known in the Chilean refugee community in Sheffield – a community still based on memories of the politics of the Allende years in Chile, and still active in asylum rights campaigning. The Chilean community website invited comments on the Target contract and started a campaign, with SYMAAG, to get Target to withdraw from the G4S contract here.

G4S sanitises its reputation and wins over the charities

The Target experience demonstrates the way in which G4S can be sanitised, losing its reputation in the ‘tainted trade’ of private security, and accepted as a credible ‘partner’ in providing housing for vulnerable tenants like asylum seekers, and perhaps become a major player in the social housing market (2). 

Gino Toro defended working with G4S because he said other well known associations with refugee housing experience ‘like Metropolitan’ (Housing Partnership) were also involved in releasing refugee housing for the G4S contract. Metropolitan, with 80,000 tenants and clients, is the largest UK regeneration and ‘social business’ housing association. Its origins lie in the Metropolitan Coloured Peoples Housing Association of 1957 which housed Jamaican and West Indian immigrants. Metropolitan has in recent years taken over Safe Haven, previously involved in asylum housing in Yorkshire, and the Refugee Housing Association, and still runs the Sheffield Station Foyer for refugees that was founded in 2005. The chair of Metropolitan is Barbara Roche a former Labour immigration minister.

In their efforts to extend their ‘asylum markets’ and ‘detention estates’ into asylum housing, all the private security companies involved in the £620 million contracts — G4S, Serco and Reliance — set out to encourage voluntary organisations, and charitable housing associations with experience in refugee and asylum housing and services, into partnerships as subcontractors. None of the security companies favoured by the Home Office had any previous experience in the field of housing – they needed to absorb and build in this experience, and credibility, to the contract bids. Reliance, the smallest of the security companies, privately owned by Brian Kingham, a Tory party donor since 2001, simply formed a joint venture, Clearel Ltd, with private company Clearsprings who had held asylum housing contracts with the Home Office since 2000. Clearel have the contract for London, the South West and Wales (3).

G4S set about its lobbying and PR project by recruiting Rebecca Woodhouseas Senior Bid Manager for G4S Security Services in February 2011. Between 2006 and 2010 Woodhouse had been Business Initiatives Officer for the Metropolitan Support Trust. Previously she had been a support manager for the Refugee Housing Association (Metropolitan Housing Trust) from 2004 to 2006.

In Yorkshire and the North East, G4S brought in housing consultant, Andrew Gray, a former president of the Chartered Institute of Housing, to set up its asylum housing sub contractors. Gray was well known in the field of social housing, and added housing expertise, and mainstream respectability, to the G4S contract bid. As the £120 million contract unfolded, G4S then recruited Duncan Wells as its Social Cohesion manager. Wells was the chief executive of RETAS, a Leeds based refugee organisation with an established reputation and strong links into the voluntary and charitable asylum support networks. Tiffy Allen, the national convenor of the extensive City of Sanctuary (CoS) movement, is a former colleague of Wells at RETAS, and, according to campaigners, is currently trying to get City of Sanctuary groups to support Wells to set up G4S consultation forums for asylum support groups.

It is perhaps worth noting that Sheffield City of Sanctuary, which started the national City of Sanctuary movement in 2007, was the organisation which actually instigated the campaign in January 2012 against G4S taking over asylum housing in South Yorkshire, by calling on SYMAAG (South Yorkshire Migration and Asylum Action Group) to lead a coalition of charities into a campaign and a protest demonstration.

This careful public relations and recruitment strategy by G4S, and its tireless efforts to network and appear as a mainstream private corporation simply pursuing contracts for outsourcing asylum housing and services, gradually neutralised any active opposition. A Report sponsored by the Joseph Rowntree Trust and Metropolitan, in conjunction with the Chartered Institute of Housing entitled ‘Housing and Migration: UK Guide to issues and solutions’, published in 2012, in the middle of the contract furore on G4S, is totally uncritical of SERCO, G4S and Reliance. The Report, written by John Perry, simply states:

“In 2012 a new challenge is to forge partnerships between the private companies that will provide asylum accommodation, local services, and migrant support organisations . . . it is going to be vital to encourage the companies to take a strategic view, recognise the ‘civic’ role they need to fulfil and contribute to successful integration.’ (p.14)

The Yorkshire G4S contract unravels

The campaign success in removing UPM from the G4S contract brought chaos and indecision to G4S and the UKBA in Yorkshire – not unlike the ‘shambles’ of the G4S Olympics contract. UKBA announced that G4S had removed Gray from contract supervision; as they euphemistically put it he was given a ‘different role’.

Despite all their undertakings to keep asylum seekers and families in the same areas where councils have housed them, G4S and the UKBA are now simply tearing up agreements. On June 13 an official UKBA statement was issued saying

“There is no intention during transition to re-house individuals currently residing in Yorkshire & Humberside to the North East.”

On 24 June a family was forcibly moved from Sheffield to Stockton, a hundred miles away, and other single asylum seekers have been moved, or threatened with moves, to Stockton or Middlesborough. Barnsley asylum seeker families have been threatened with moves 120 miles away to Newcastle.

G4S desperation and ‘reverse privatisation’

G4S is becoming so desperate that it is, remarkably, trying a form of ‘reverse privatisation’ by paying local authorities, and housing associations, like InCommunities in Bradford, to allow them to take over and manage asylum accommodation with sitting asylum seeker tenants from previous local council contracts. This is because G4S and their private contractors cannot find any local private rented sector accommodation to put the families in, when they have to leave local authority housing. Campaigners in Kirklees (Huddersfield) say the council there has turned down at least two offers from G4S.

Target Housing, the only social housing provider willing, so far, to openly partner G4S in Yorkshire, is now reeling from exposure in the national housing press, and the local media in South Yorkshire. Demand for them to withdraw from the contract is gathering momentum. The trustees are now being lobbied, leaflets are being prepared and actions scheduled.

With the G4S shambles in the Olympics being reflected in chaos in the asylum housing contracts, the G4S hold on the Yorkshire and North East contract is uncertain. Campaigners are calling for a rapid return to contracts held directly with the local councils throughout Yorkshire, with no G4S involvement; contracts grounded in public service values, welcoming asylum seekers, instead of the profit-oriented values of an international security company exploiting its ‘asylum markets’ with the tacit support of the social and refugee housing establishment.

A Masterclass in Privatised Security: G4S and the Olympics

The Guardian put the allegations to G4S. A spokesman for the company responded: "We are unable to respond to the specific questions you raise because to do so would involve pulling staff, who are working hard to mobilise the 2012 workforce, off the work they are doing."We will enquire into the claims that are made and we take very seriously any allegation of poor standards on our part."  

The Guardian, 13th July 2012

Although they were originally contracted to provide 2,000 security staff, G4S' new multi-million pound contract with Games provider LOCOG now requires them to provide 13,700 guards over the course of the Olympics. Over the last few days, it has been revealed that - two weeks before the opening ceremony - only 4,000 G4S guards are fully vetted, trained and in place to provide the service. G4S' assurance that a further 9,000 are in the pipeline hasn't convinced the Home Office who have now drafted in Army reserves to fill the gaping whole. A total of 17,000 servicemen will now be involved in Olympic security.

Teresa May assured the Commons that details about G4S' failure to honour the terms of the contract only came to her knowledge on Wednesday (11th July), although it seems as if ministers had been aware about the possibility of calling in extra troops for the past couple of weeks. G4S' own heads may have also been in the sands, with the managing director of G4S Global Events telling Reuters early in the week that "we are keen to pursue events all over the globe and we do have the scale to do more than one thing at once." These "nine-figure aspirations" look set to dissipate under the pressure of criticism from government and media alike.

It's difficult to sift through the pages of reportage that swiftly followed G4S' Olympian fall from grace without a wry smile creeping across my face. We've already found reasons to take issue with G4S' creeping control of public services, but now so has everyone else. 

The idea of a private security army being hired to 'secure' the Olympic Games - in the twisted Orwellian fantasy that is the 2012 London Olympic Games - makes perfect sense. In this hyper-commercialised space, where non-MacDonald chips are only allowed to be served as an accompaniment to fish and 80% of all Olympic visitors expected to be coaxed through the new Westfield shopping centre in Stratford en route to the Olympic Village, we have been given an exclusive preview of what a world run by private companies with 'commercial interests' could become.

Keith Vaz, the Home Affairs Select Committee Chairman, declared that "G4S has let the country down and we have literally had to send in the troops" and stated that all public contracts with G4S should be reviewed and all potential contracts shelved. Another Liberal Democrat MP and member of the public accounts committee, Ian Swales, stated that concerns about G4S' extortionate profit margins had been continually raised in meetings:

"We were really concerned because when the announcement of doubling of the number of security personnel was made we looked at the breakdown of the costs and we saw that the G4S contract was going up from £86 to £284 million, which felt like a colossal amount of money. [...] For these large amounts of money you would expect excellent service so to me this is just compounding a felony, vast sums of money buying a service that is very poor quality." 

Similar concerns have already been voiced by Jeremy Corbyn (Labour) and Dan Rogerson (Liberal Democrat) in Parliament.

G4S' capacity to execute the £284 million pound contract was also put in doubt when aspects of their interview and training processes were revealed by the press. Experienced ex-police officers and prison officers were appalled by the level of incompetence found within G4S' administrative staff, claiming that the company clearly didn't have sufficient staff and methods in place to deal with the sheer quantity of applicants. Many have still not received accreditation, uniform or confirmation of their employment. It is little wonder that G4S' own Facebook page is fast becoming a forum for angry employees.

Future procurement prospects in the policing sector have also been put in doubt. Surrey Police have now shelved plans for police privatisation with G4S' Olympic Security fiasco cited as a reason for delaying the decision. The police authority chairman, Peter Williams, told press that "members agreed today that it is right that we should suspend our involvement at this time and that we should look to withdraw altogether following a more detailed assessment of our options in September."

When the City and Government have become quasi-synonymous, it is hardly surprising that the government is threatening G4S with financial penalties. And even these financial penalties are under question. Whilst LOCOG stated that G4S would be charged for failing to provide the number of staff it promised, a government source - speaking to the Independent - stated that the contract was in fact drawn up on a pro-rata basis, with G4S paid per guard rather than for the whole security contract. However, by Friday (13th July) evening, G4S conceded that it expects to lose between £35 and £50 million for its failure to honour the terms of the contract. Their net market value also dropped by £150 million in the past two days.

Now, history tells us that the governments attraction to G4S's commercial viability has not been dented by charges, scandal or slander. The death of Jimmy Mubenga, potentially being charged with corporate manslaughter, tides of complaints brought against the company by detainees (a record 773 in 2010), rises in prisoner suicides in G4S run prisons, and countless other 'questionable' aspects of G4S' track record have not - so far - been sufficiently considered in government due diligence procedures as reason to reconsider their suitability for new contracts. Despite having their forcible deportation contract cut short in 2011 (after the death of Jimmy Mubenga), G4S have still been awarded multi-million pound asylum housing contracts in Yorkshire, the North East and the Midlands. In the words of one Independent columnist: "In the City, the odd migrant death and PR slip doesn't seem to make a dent on analyst expectations of a public-sector contract bonanza." If 'City' is swiftly accompanied by 'Government', we've hit the nail right on the head.

With the Olympics putting London centre stage, a scandal on this scale cannot be seen to go unpunished. Yet it saddens me that serious issues regarding the safety and protection of asylum seekers in the UK - who have been subject to atrocious G4S service provision for the past few years - have failed to rouse such an indignant roar from the press. This Olympic security catastrophe has given the government a masterclass in the ethos of privatisation: profit before people, and even before product. Lets not make any more mistakes.

G4S News Update // 18 - 24th June

G4S News Update // 18th - 24th June 

Yorkshire Campaigners Claim Small Victory Over World's Biggest Security Company, Open Democracy, 20th June 2012: Campaigners across Yorkshire have forced G4S to sever their relationship with slum landlords, United Property Management. G4S quietly removed all reference to the company from their website. (See original posting on G4S blog for further information.) 

G4S Boss Predicts Mass Privatisation of UK Police Forces, The Guardian, The Telegraph, Info4Security (amongst others), 21st June 2012: The Guardian's interview with G4S boss David Taylor-Smith was picked up by much of the mainstream press and online commenters. Claiming that the general public 'don't really care' about police privatisation, Taylor-Smith reiterated G4S' interest in furthering contracts within Policing services. 

How G4S is Securing Your World, The Guardian, 21st June 2012: Matthew Taylor's feature comprehensively details G4S' rocketing growth over the past few years. 

G4S Security Staff Accused of Faking Sniffer Dog Searches at Olympic Site, The Sun, 22nd June 2012: Two members of G4S staff have been suspended after an internal review of G4S' security provision at the Olympic Site revealed that staff had been faking the searches of traffic entering the Olympic Park for 3 years. 

G4S Online Systems Hit by Hacktivist, Information Age, 23rd June 2012: An online hacker published a list of G4S personnel and their contact details online, as part of a protest against G4S' violations of human rights. G4S claimed that their security had not been breached. 

Coalition to end 'cosy' government supply contracts, The Telegraph, The Independent, 24th June 2012: Twenty-two private companies - including G4S - that hold the most contracts with the UK government have been called to a meeting at the Cabinet Office to be warned that the government will be "tough" and demand the "best value for money" from their private contractors. A government spokesperson stated that “suppliers with poor performance may therefore find it more difficult to secure new work for the Government.” Yet G4S' 'poor performance' hasn't seemed to have affected their capacity for renewed and further government contracts…

G4S News Update 28th May - 3rd June

G4S News Update 28th May - 3rd June

G4S refutes claims that the company are set to operate in Libya without formal approval, Libya Herald, May 28th 2012: In post-revolutionary Libya, G4S are supposedly planning to start operating their private security services on Libyan soil without government authorisation. G4S states that this claim is unfounded. 

Female asylum seeker and her 12 week old baby moved from Bradford home to slum flat in Doncaster, Open Democracy, May 30th 2012: As transition begins in Yorkshire, United Property Management (G4S' chosen subcontractors) have started to evict asylum seeking tenants from homes in the region. This young mother was given barely 1 weeks notice before she was moved to a flat in Doncaster with no cooker, sofa or chairs and with a only a tiny sink for washing. (Also covered in 24Dash w/photographs)

Full list of bidders for police contracts in the West Midlands and Surrey published, Birmingham Post, May 31st 2012: The full list of preferred bidders for the police privatisation contracts in the West Midlands and Surrey has recently been published. 

Cambridgeshire Police look to privatise support staff to plug funding shortfalls, Hunts Post, June 1st 2012: Following in the footsteps of Lincolnshire Police, Cambridgeshire Police are putting plans in motion to privatise back room 'support' staff in their regional police stations. 

London lawyer takes on G4S' involvement in Israeli security in occupied territories, The Electronic Intifada, June 1st 2012: A London lawyer, and active supporter of Jews for Justice for Palestine, has been interviewed by The Electronic Intifada about G4S Israel's involvement in detention and security in Palestinian territories. 

G4S whistleblower loses job after claiming overstretched G4S staff were cutting corners when recruiting staff for London's Olympics, The Northerner Echo, June 2nd 2012: A woman from Darlington was told not to return to G4S offices after talking to the media about her fears that G4S' systems were cracking under the pressure of thousand of applications for security jobs during the Olympics. (Subsequently covered in the Daily Mail on the 5th June).

OTHER UPDATES//NEWS

- New Corporate Watch update on G4S' interests in occupied territories in Palestine, social housing and international security launched on the 31st May. 

- Stop G4S! Protest at G4S Annual General Meeting

12:30pm, Thursday June 7
London Stock Exchange, Paternoster Square, London EC4M 7LS - see the following website for more info. 

First G4S, then Reliance...

"The poet, the artist, the sleuth - whoever sharpens our perception tends to be antisocial; rarely "well-adjusted," he cannot go along with currents or trends. A strange bond often exists among anti-social types in their power to see environments as they really are. This need to interfere, confront environments, with a certain anti-social power is manifest in the famous story, The Emperor's New Clothes. "Well-adjusted" courtiers, having vested interests, saw the emperor as beautifully appointed. The "anti-social" brat, unaccustomed to the old environment, clearly saw that the Emperor "ain't got nothin' on." The new environment was clearly visible to him."

 (Marshall McLuhan & Quentin Fiore, The Medium is the Massage, 1967)

Reliance Ltd, the company recently contracted to provide NASS accommodation in London and Wales (albeit in a new joint venture with Clearsprings Ltd to form Clearel Ltd), have been under the media spotlight this weekend. The Guardian's investigative journalism team published a series of articles that revealed a litany of abuse cases brought against the company since they took on the deportation and transportation contract that was lost by G4S in 2010. 

Deportees recorded instances of physical, emotional and psychological abuse, ranging from a general lack of respect to occurrences that bordered on simple assault. In the words of their own acting senior charter operation manager, Roy Stagg, "the company is dealing with something more cultural than isolated."

An internal memo leaked to the Guardian revealed the levels to which Reliance is aware of its own failings. The document simply states: 

"Is there actually a problem with our business? The consensus was: yes. Is this a company where women, ethnic minorities and those of diverse religions feel comfortable? Evidence would suggest: no."

This memo, circulated after the company was awarded the deportation and transportation contract, highlights a 'laddish' culture in which respect for other staff members, deportees and even management is critically low. The fact is that these working cultures do not appear out of nowhere. These practices clearly existed prior to the awarding of last years contract and this year's NASS accommodation contract, highlighting a certain 'decided ignorance' on behalf of the Home Office and UKBA. Referring back to Marshall McLuhan's quotation, "Well-adjusted" courtiers, having vested interests, saw the emperor as beautifully appointed."

The UKBA's response to these accusations of abuse, assault and mistreatment is hardly surprising: 

"In all but one of these cases, we have either received no complaint or have conducted a thorough investigation which has found allegations over the use of force were entirely without merit."

Yet, in a case followed by the Guardian's article, an individual who filed a case against Reliance for an alleged assault on a deportation flight back to Nepal had his injuries recorded at Yarl's Wood detention centre, after his flight was grounded. Here, we encounter another private security firm: Serco. Serco's medical team photographed wounds to the individual's wrist, forearms and neck, but the photographs were deemed insufficiently detailed to act as evidence.

Neither the UKBA or the Home Office want another Jimmy Mubenga case. The fact that their new contractors are racking up a similar record to their predecessors - G4S - doesn't seem to alter the government's rosy view of outsourcing critical aspects of the asylum process. Private companies easily evade accountability; remember that this memo was leaked, not published. Whilst the government and establishment continue to idolise the private sector, it takes the acts of "anti-social brats" to hold those appointed to account.

"The new environment was clearly visible to him."

First they came for the asylum seeker...

Again, we have to thank Jon Grayson for another brilliant article on the Institute for Race Relations' website. Published just before G4S won the government contracts for the provision of asylum seekers' social housing in Yorkshire and Humberside, Grayson puts the "asylum market" (G4S' words, not mine) in the important context of wider privatisation in the UK. 

Below is a short extract from Grayson's article:

"The UK is amongst the most intensively covered by private security with one private guard to every 170 people compared with one police employee to every 382 citizens -figures comparable to Hungary and Serbia. Germany on the other hand has much lighter private security with one private guard for every 484 citizens and one police employee for every 326 citizens. The private security business in the UK is worth £3.97 billion annually. Across Europe this is a very powerful lobby for privatising and marketising state functions. Just three companies have 46 per cent of the market in the UK. Just three companies have 56 per cent of the market across the EU. Published data from the EU does not directly name them but itwould be strange indeed if G4S and SERCO were not amongst them."

Please take a moment to read the whole article here.

According to Grayson, policies that affect asylum seekers have continually been used as trial-runs for wider policy-making. The government's obsession with making 'guinea pigs' out of asylum seekers is testament to the extent to which they have been dehumanised, demonised and deconstructed in the media. It seems like they've created a perfect scapegoat; with real lives and experiences obscured an obscene caricature, the asylum seeker is forced to be both invisible and grossly overexposed. When an individual is so heavily obstructed by layers of institutionalised prejudice and preconceptions, it is little wonder that much of the inflammatory press and political coverage goes unquestioned and almost unnoticed.

Our response to G4S' new asylum contracts // SYMAAG

Our group, the South Yorkshire Migration and Asylum Action Group (SYMAAG) was appalled that G4S has been awarded the contract to house people seeking asylum in Yorkshire and Humberside. They have no experience of providing housing (unless you count detention centres...) and their experience of dealing with asylum seekers is to detain, deport and abuse them. You'll know that 3 G4S employees are on bail facing manslaughter charges relating to the death of Jimmy Mubenga in 2010. The company as a whole is also waiting to see if it will face corporate manslaughter charges. As one local Zimbabwean asylum seeker put it "I don't want a prison guard as my landlord". Many asylum seekers regard G4S winnig the contract as tantamount to house arrest. One company now houses them, transports them and detains them. With G4S providing security at Baghdad Airport, they could even meet them at the other end...Changing the name from "G4S" to "G4S Care and Justice Services" doesn't change these facts.

Although the contract was signed 3 weeks late and only by the Acting Regional UK Borders Agency Director, we were not surprised they have been awarded £millions of public money. There appeared to us to be a high level of collusion between G4S and Yorkshire and Humberside regional UKBA long before the contract was signed. For example the COMPASS/UKBA Transition Team were in close contact with G4S before even the "due diligence" procedure had finished, whereas the COMPASS transition Team were - by definition - tasked with overseeing the transition from existing to G4S-run accomodation. On first-name terms at meetings. More than once, in meetings with G4S managers, they used the past tense to describe them winning the contract. Apart from possible legal challenges to way the contract has been awarded - what risk assessments were done? are children's rights to be safeguarded? - the widespread campaign against privatising asylum housing will now focus its energies on monitoring the standard of housing provided by a company which has stated "Our primary concern is to ensure a return for our shareholders" (Steven Small, Regional Borders and Immigration G4S director in a meeting with SYMAAG and UKBA on 24/2/12). We would like to see asylum seeker tenants federations - linked to established ones - which can ensure that those people who complain about housing standards are taken seriously and not victimised.

We regard the COMPASS Corporate Partner FAQ document (attached) as completely inadequate (and extremely defensive). Despite COMPASS "aiming", "desiring", "looking to" ensure that:

• G4S-provided housing will be more than substandard
• That disruption to children's education will be minimised
• that the sole criteria of re-housing will not be low cost

It is clear that they have no power to enforce any of these stated aims. In fact, 800 human beings face being uprooted in our region, disrupting lives, education, health provision and community integration. The FAQ document talks about complaints mechanisms but in a meeting with COMPASS and G4S management, both agencies made it clear that they regarded anonymised complaints as akin to anecdotes. The fact that they cannot understand why an asylum seeker might want to anonymise their complaint speaks volumes about their utter lack of understanding of the people they aim to house.

Finally, part of the reason that our campaign against G4S in Yorkshire has gained so much momentum is that many people realise their bid to manage asylum housing is a stepping stone to the more lucrative social housing market. Privatisation isn't popular in Yorkshire but solidarity with the underdog is. Evicting and dealing with asylum tenants (who have no tenants rights) is a useful trial run for managing tenants in social housing in future. Like we've always said: "first they come for the asylum seeker..."

Dehumanising, not dignified: SERCO's training manuals for detention centre guards

Today, Australian investigative journalists released Serco's 400-page induction training documents for their employees working in Australia's detention centres. Dated in 2009/10, this training manual takes on a strictly prison style technique in its explicit instructions on how to control detainees.

SERCO, the multinational security company contracted to run Australia's detention centres, have a $1 billion contract with the Gillard Government, running 9 different asylum outputs. They also already run two detention centres in the UK, Yarl's Wood and Colnbrook. And to no surprise, they are the preferred bidders - alongside G4S and Reliance Security - for the new asylum housing contracts across the UK. The North West and Northern Ireland can look forward to SERCO providing accommodation for asylum seekers in the imminent further.

The release of SERCO's 2009/10 training manual, allegedly after refusing to release similar documents on multiple occasions, reinforces existing concerns about the capacity for private security companies to provide dignified and respectful services for asylum seekers in detention, deportation or temporary accommodation. Much of the document focuses on key "control and restraint" techniques, recommending using a tactic of "pain" to defend, subdue and control asylum seekers. In a frighteningly dehumanising sentence, employees are advised to "subdue the subject using reasonable force so that he/she is no longer in the assailant category [...] If justified, necessary force is to be used to bring the subject to cooperative subject status whereupon they respond favourably to verbalisation."

Continuing to describe countless different 'defence' techniques, their "control and restraint" tactics sound more like excessive force. Employees are taught to use pressure points, batons and physical restraint to cause "high level of pain and mental stunning" in order to coerce the detainee into submission. Void of any compassionate or reconciliatory language, SERCO's training manual hardly brings "service to life."

Aside from dubious restraint techniques, SERCO's training guide reinforces many other unsavoury tactics. Elsewhere in the document, SERCO describe their use of a "Detention Discipline" interview as something that "appears to be very similar to the one that many parents adopt in responding to the actions of a son or a daughter who appears to have behaved unacceptably." According to SERCO, asylum seekers are to be reprimanded like unruly children. SERCO released a statement this afternoon, declaring that "We are committed to treating the people in our care with dignity and respect, and to keeping all those we are responsible for from coming to any sort of harm." Can they honestly claim that treating asylum seekers as children and submitting them to high levels of pain as a coercion technique provides dignity, respect and care for detainees in their centres?

Furthermore, SERCO advise that the use of force should only be undertaken by male guards. Whilst male employees are told to be "tough, strong, in the lead, in control and not back down and give as good as you get, show no weakness, win if you can, never mind the cost", female guards are told to be "gentle, follow, be compassionate, put others before herself, to share, not to argue and not to get angry." This level of gender stereotyping and categorisation is frightening.

Chris Bowen, Minister for Immigration and Citizenship in Australia, released a statement this afternoon, claiming that this SERCO manual is outdated and no longer in use. Reiterating comments made by SERCO's spokesperson, Chris Bowen trundled out the familiar phrases of "defensive actions", "last resort" and "dignity and respect." Regardless of whether the training manual has been superseded by a new edition, these guidelines were in place in 2010, only two years ago. Even last year, a freedom of information request revealed that the government's official contract with SERCO allowed for guards to be hired with no experience, or only with nightclub bouncer training. This training document is hardly a single blip in SERCO's record.

This is another failure of government "outsourcing." It is time to tackle the government-endorsed "asylum market" and remind the authorities of the human lives they are putting at risk in favour of "cost-effective solutions." Private companies, focusing on profit rather than people, are hardly the perfect candidates to provide care, dignity and safety for those seeking sanctuary across the globe.

March 1st Demonstration Success

Protesting outside Vulcan House, regional HQ of the UK Borders Agency on February 15th

On March 1st, spring sun warmed the 80 protestors gathered outside Sheffield Town Hall to say "No to G4S managing asylum housing". We were a mixed bunch: asylum seekers and refugees from all over the world; asylum rights campaigners from all over Yorkshire and the Midlands; trade unionists opposed to the privatisation of public services; campaigners for migrant women's rights, activists from Palestine (already familiar with G4S for their role in backing the Israeli security forces).

This was the second regional demonstration held in Sheffield against G4S prison guards being given public money to manage the housing of asylum seekers.

Passers-by were mostly keen to take leaflets: there's a lot of understanding in Sheffield about who asylum seekers are and why they come here; there's even more understanding that the privatisation of public services benefits nobody except big corporations like G4S. Some people stopped to listen to the speakers and share their own stories of reduced wages and impossible jobs due to privatisation. A statement was read out from Mafungasei Maikokera, a Zimbabwean refugee who had been charged with assault on G4S! Of course, the charges were dropped and the actual violence came from G4S: "when G4S are at it, it is like a boxing match" she told us.

Apart from a couple of police (one of whom quietly voiced his concerns that G4S were trying to privatise the police force) we stewarded ourselves and marched to the UK Borders Agency where we held another rally in full view - and earshot - of the workers there (some of them supporters of our campaign).

Everybody who wanted to speak got a chance: from a few words of support from people who had travelled from other towns and cities to rousing stuff from SYMAAG's John Grayson, ending with "brothers and sisters, we can beat them!" 6 days after the contract between UKBA and G4S was due to be signed, it is still blank. Every enquiry to UKBA about why this is the case receives a different answer. But the fact remains, G4S and UKBA were mistaken to think that nobody cares about asylum seekers' housing or privatisation.