More than £300m to be spent on new Channel migrant detention centres

MORE than £300million is to be spent on new detention centres for Channel migrants, the Mail can reveal today.

The Home Office is seeking contractors to operate three new immigration removal centres (IRCs) designed to hold 1,000 people in total.

The contracts – valued at £306million – will run for four years and ‘possibly for up to a further two years’, official documents say, indicating ministers expect the Channel crisis could continue until the end of the decade.

Extra space is required because of the surge in small boat crossings from France, they add, although the sites will also hold foreign criminals facing deportation.

Companies which have expressed an interest in bidding for the contracts will be provided with more information by the Home Office today, once they have signed a confidentiality agreement. The Home Office paperwork states: ‘Due to the unprecedented rise of small boat crossings in recent years, demand on the IRC estate has increased and there is a requirement for the expansion of its capacity.

‘This notice covers the procurement of operational services for an additional circa 1,000 detention spaces across three sites.

‘Alternative accommodation solutions are also being explored and, if approved, may lead to further demand for operational services.’ The location of the three sites has not been disclosed.

Two of the contracts up for grabs are for new IRCs to each hold 360 detainees. Both are valued at £108million, tendering papers say. The third, worth £90million, would provide beds for 300 people.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s vow to ‘stop the boats’ is one of his five key pledges to voters. Parliament has passed tough new immigration laws which allow migrants who arrive by irregular routes – such as small boats – to be ‘detained and swiftly returned’ to their homeland or a third country.

But the chief inspector of prisons, Charlie Taylor, warned in January that the UK’s immigration detention centres do not have the capacity for Mr Sunak’s plan to detain every small boat migrant – there are currently 2,500 spaces. The Government has already announced plans to reopen disused centres at Campsfield House, near Oxford, and Haslar in Gosport, Hampshire.

Bids for the £450million, six-year contracts to hold an additional 1,000 detainees closed in January.

Both centres were due to be up and running this month, but are delayed until next year. The three new centres revealed today, plus the re- opened sites, will expand capacity by 80 per cent.

Last December a report by thinktank the Centre for Policy Studies called for more detention centres to be built so illegal migrants could be deported more swiftly.

The CPS suggested one solution could be the development of Ministry of Defence land to provide ‘modular accommodation’ on the Otterburn Ranges in Northumberland and other locations in Wales or the Scottish Highlands.

The same study urged ministers to duplicate the Rwanda asylum deal, which will see migrants permanently removed from the UK, with at least two other countries.

Earlier this month the Mail revealed the Home Office has been studying plans to send migrants to Ascension Island and is in negotiation with five countries – all thought to be in Africa – for schemes similar to the Rwanda deal.

The Home Office yesterday confirmed a further 130 migrants reached Dover on Saturday, bringing the total so far this year to 17,620 – down 17 per cent on the same point last year. A spokesman said: ‘Immigration removal centres play a vital role in controlling our borders and we have been finding further solutions to scale up our detention capacity.’

‘Scale up capacity to meet demand’