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.

'We're guarding you with all our might': G4S' prog-rock company anthem

G4S: more employees than the population of Luxembourg, a company flag, and a theme tune. For a while, we couldn't get hold of the music video - in the context of the Olympic debacle, we reckon G4S didn't want their promotional video adding fuel to the fire. But either it's back, or someone's done well in recreating what it was...

Here's a little selection of the lyrics: 

You love your job and the people too / Making a difference is what you do / But consider all you have at stake / The time is now don't make a mistake  

Because the enemy prowls, wanting to attack / But we're on the wall, we've got your back / So get out front and take the lead / And be the winner you were born to be 

G4S! protecting the world / G4S! so dreams can unfurl / 24/7 every night and day / A warrior stands ready so don't be afraid 
G4S! secure in your world / G4S! let your dreams unfurl 
We're guarding you with all our might / Keeping watch throughout the night...

G4S News Update // 16 - 22nd July

I hope you've all been enjoying the amount of press G4S have been getting over the last few weeks! Here's a little summary of the key stories from the last week:

G4S shares plummet after Olympic contract failures, Reuters, 16th July 2012: After G4S completely cock-up Olympic Security, damage is seen in the stock market. Shares in G4S fell to the lowest level in more than six months.

Nick Buckles' hero is Margaret Thatcher, The Guardian, 17th July 2012: The Guardian comments on the New Statesman's republication of an interview with G4S CEO Nick Buckles. His economic advice for the UK government goes as follows: "To continue to focus on traditional Tory values around encouraging a meritocracy and inspiring value creation." Lovely. 

G4S Olympic Fiasco: the people pipeline, Open Democracy, 17th July 2012: Another excellent piece from Clare Sambrook on the affect of G4S' failures with Olympic security on the army and the police. 

G4S look for new PR manager with 'personal credibility', Political Scrapbook, 18th July 2012: After the complete PR disaster around Olympic security, G4S post an advert on Linkedin for a new PR manager. Ideal candidates will have "personal credibility" and the capacity to work with crisis management…

Nick Buckles admits that Olympic failure was a "humiliating shambles", TIME, 18th July 2012: On the day of Nick Buckles and Ian Horseman Sewell's appearance in front of a Home Affairs Select Committee, news about G4S' security shortfall went global. Coverage was seen in TIME, the Wall Street Journal and even Fox News. 

Ed Miliband states that G4S failure is a "warning sign" for police privatisation, Politics.co.uk, 19th July 2012: Read Ed Miliband's speech in full here. 

Police take over Glasgow security from G4S, The Guardian, 21st July 2012: Strathclyde police said on Friday that they were taking over responsibility for security at Olympic venues in Glasgow due to serious concerns over G4S' capacity to provide sufficient security staff. 

Labour MP Keith Vaz promises to closely monitor the G4S deal with Lincolnshire Police, BBC News, 21st July 2012: This potentially lucrative deal for G4S is set to be closely monitored by the Home Affairs Select Committee. 

G4S planning to monopolise on new outsourcing deals with UK prisons, The Guardian, 22nd July 2012: Despite the Olympic catastrophe, G4S are still bidding for the contracts to manage 5 new prisons, in deals that could amount to more than £2bn. 

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.

Activists Occupy the Roof of G4S HQ!

Text c/o Indymedia 


Activists are staging a rooftop occupation at the headquarters of security multinational G4S near Crawley, West Sussex, in protest at what they claim are “illegal and immoral activities” in both the UK and Palestine/Israel.

Early this morning, two activists climbed on top of the multistory building and
secured themselves in place using superglue and bike locks.

Two banners were seen hanging from the edge of the building. One read “G4S – Profiting from: Israeli Apartheid, Prison Slavery, Deadly Deportations”.

Another dozen protesters are surrounding the building on the ground, shouting slogan and holding anti-G4S placards.

G4S provides equipment to prisons inside Israel to which Palestinian political prisoners from occupied territory are transferred in violation of the Geneva Conventions, tortured and subjected to arbitrary detention.

Under Article 76 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, Israel is forbidden to transfer Palestinian prisoners from occupied territories to prisons inside Israel. Despite this, thousands of Palestinian prisoners are unlawfully held in prisons inside Israel that are supplied by G4S. Palestinian civil society has condemned G4S' complicity with Israeli violations of international law and called for action against the company.

The company provides equipment to the Kishon and Moskobiyyeh detention facilities at which human rights organisations have documented systematic torture and ill-treatment of Palestinian prisoners, including child prisoners. A recent UK government backed delegation found that Israel is breaching at least six violations of the UN convention of the child in its treatment of child detainees.

More than 1,600 Palestinian political prisoners went on a mass hunger strike on 15th April this year. Mahmoud Sarsak ended his 92-day hunger strike on June 18 and is due to be released on 10 July, but three others remain on hunger strike in protest against their detention without trial.[4] G4S also provides equipment to Israeli in the West Bank that form part of the route of Israel’s illegal Wall and to illegal settlements.

In the UK, G4S runs six private prisons at which 400 prisoners are forced to work 40 hours a week for as little as £2 a day.

The company also runs three immigration detention centres, where detainees have made repeated claims of abuse and assault.

Last year the company lost a multi-million contract with the UK Border Agency to deport refused migrants after 773 complaints of abuse were made against it and following the death of Jimmy Mubenga, an Angolan asylum seeker who died as a result of G4S security guards applying illegal restraint techniques.

Despite all this, G4S is being awarded a wide range of public service contracts, from taking over police forces and providing controversial workfare schemes and asylum accommodation on behalf of the government to providing all security at the London Olympics.

Today's protest is the latest in a new, international campaign against the controversial company. On 7th June, more than 70 people demonstrated outside the G4S Annual General Meeting and handed shareholders an “Alternative Annual Report” detailing the company's alleged violations of human rights and international law.

One of the rooftop protesters, Tom Hayes from the Boycott Israel Network, said: “UK businesses should not be profiting from the detention and mistreatment of children.”

“Brutal systems of discrimination such as Israeli Apartheid are maintained because companies like G4S are willing to do business with them, in total disregard of the human consequences and of international law. G4S is an example of a business that cynically views the practices of such regimes as good for business.”

“Action much be taken to prevent corporate complicity with Israeli violations of international law.”

The other protester, Sean Flint from No Borders UK, said:

“I wonder how many Jimmy Mubengas it will take to realise that companies like G4S don't care about people placed in their care, but are only concerned with maximising their profits, no matter what the human cost.”

“Awarding control of the police, justice and prison systems to a company with such a blatant disregard for basic human rights, as the government has shown its willingness to do, is truly frightening.”

Activists will picket the 12 July meeting of the West Midlands Police Authority. G4S is bidding for a £1.5bn contract to run Police services in the West Midlands and Surrey. 

Stop G4S policing the West Midlands

Human Rights First! Stop the Corporate takeover of Policing services

Join the lobby of West Midlands Police Authority

At 10am on Thursday 12th July outside West Midlands Police HQ, Lloyd House in Birmingham City Centre.

Learn more about the West Midlands Against Policing for Profit campaign here. 

On 12^th July West Midlands Police Authority will meet to discuss how to take forward the privatisation programme of critical police services worth £1.5bn. West Midlands against Policing for Profit is opposed to this privatisation in principle and calls for the tendering to be cancelled.

The shortlisted companies include corporate giants KBR and G4S who between them have questionable human and labour rights records from Guantanamo Bay to Iraq, from Occupied Palestine and to the treatment of asylum seekers in the UK.

If the procurement process continues after 12^th July we are calling on the Police Authority to give full consideration to the human rights records of the companies bidding for the BPP contract.  It can exclude companies from tendering on grounds of ‘grave professional misconduct’.  We are calling on the Police Authority to rigorously examine the human rights records of these companies.

KBR, is a former subsidiary of Halliburton, and has had extensive contracts from the US Government to provide services to support the military occupation of Iraq. KBR’s subcontractors have allegedly engaged in human trafficking and the use forced labour to provide services for KBR in Iraq.

KBR is one of the companies that built the infamous Guantanamo Bay detention camp. The facility at Guantanamo was not only used to detain people without trial and to carry out interrogations with torture, the site itself was built in a manner designed to dehumanise and terrorise those held there.

In the UK, G4S has been the subject of 700 complaints over the treatment of asylum detainees of which 130 were upheld.  G4S has been implicated in the deaths of a number of asylum seekers in its custody; in 2010 G4S lost a Home Office forcible deportation contract after the death of an Angolan deportee, Jimmy Mubenga, while being restrained on a flight back home. See the rest of this blog for further information on G4S' shady human rights record. 

G4S is also the subject of a global call for action by Palestinian civil society on the grounds it ‘helps to maintain and profit from Israel’s prison system, for its complicity with Israeli violations of international law.’

West Midlands Against Policing for Profit is asking people to support the lobby  to oppose the corporations  bidding to run these critical policing services.

Human Rights First! Stop KBR! Stop G4S! Keep up to date with campaign developments here.