HOME Office plans to replace the controversial Dungavel Immigration Removal Centre with a “rapid removal facility” have been criticised by the Scottish Government.

Though Scottish ministers and campaigners have given a cautious welcome to the closure of Dungavel, there were concern that the new temporary centre might not be any more humane and could restrict the rights of detainees.

The controversial centre in Strathaven, South Lanarkshire, became a focal point around the debate concerning the treatment of asylum seekers whose applications to stay in the UK had been rejected.

Families were held in the former 19th-century hunting lodge until the Home Office could have them deported.

Campaigners have staged protests since it became an Immigration Removal Centre in 2001.

Hundreds, including former detainees, gathered outside to protest in May, telling our sister paper The Sunday Herald they were locked in cramped, squalid and uncomfortable conditions and forced to exist on a poor diet, with asylum seekers given chips for breakfast.

Announcing the closure, Robert Goodwill, UK immigration minister said: “We keep our detention estate under constant review to ensure we have the right resources in the right places.

“The new short-term holding facility would provide easy access to London airports, from where most removals take place, meaning those with no right to be in the UK can be removed with less delay.”

The new centre in Abbotsinch Road, beside Glasgow Airport, still needs approval from Renfrewshire Council, but it would have just 51 beds, with the Home Office insisting the “vast majority” of stays would be for less than a week.

The Scottish Government gave Dungavel’s closure a qualified welcome. Angela Constance, cabinet secretary for communities, social security and equalities said: “The Scottish Government has long campaigned for the replacement of Dungavel with a more humane system, however, by introducing a rapid removal facility there is a real risk that people who have been living in Scotland will either have their opportunities to challenge their deportation restricted or be taken to immigration removal centres far away from their families, friends and legal representation.

“This move could make it considerably more difficult for them to pursue their cases and have serious impacts on their mental health.

“We will be seeking urgent clarification from the UK Government on their proposals, and guarantees around the way asylum seekers based in Scotland facing deportation will be treated.”

Dungavel is expected to close near the end of 2017, within a few months of the new facility opening.

Human rights lawyer Aamer Anwar, who has represented families detained at Dungavel, called the closure “long overdue”.

He said: “As far back as 2003 when I represented the Ay family, who were Kurdish asylum seekers, a mother and her four children who sought safety in this country were incarcerated behind barbed wire for over a year.”

“Their treatment disregarded the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and symbolised the treatment of other families and children.”

Dr Lisa Doyle, the Refugee Council’s head of advocacy, welcomed the news: “For many years, asylum seekers have been regularly and arbitrarily detained in Dungavel, so its closure is an important step forward.

“Instead of building a new centre in its place, the UK Government should focus on phasing out the costly and cruel detention of asylum seekers completely.”

Gavin Newlands, whose Paisley and Renfrewshire North constituency would be home to the new facility said he had serious concerns.

He said: “This new short-term facility, if built, could allow moving detainees to centres in England that allow long-term detention. This would move them far away from their friends and legal advisors to a jurisdiction where access to justice is severely impeded by a very limited legal aid regime.

“The vast majority of people, including women and children, held in these facilities are not criminals but the system and the facilities effectively treat them as such.”

The summer retreat that became a notorious immigration removal centre


BUILT in the 19th-century, Dungavel was originally a hunting lodge and summer pad for the Dukes of Hamilton.

It was here Nazi Rudolf Hess was aiming for in his doomed and unauthorised bid to try and negotiate peace with the British in 1941. He falsely believed the Duke of Hamilton opposed the war with Germany. Dungavel at that time was a hospital, as it had been during the First World War.

The 14th Duke of Hamilton sold the building to the National Coal Board in 1947, who then passed it to the government which turned it into a low category, or open prison. Pictured left is Agnes Curran, the then governor of the prison, in 1979.

In 2001 it became the Immigration Removal Centre, where asylum seekers whose applications had been refused were detained prior to their removal.

The stark reality of conditions inside the centre were brought to the attention of the public in 2003, when the Ay family, a Kurdish mother and her four young children were kept, effectively imprisoned, for over a year.

On July 23 2004, Tran Quang Tung, a Vietnamese man, hanged himself in the centre. There have been reports of suicide attempts and those detained being placed on suicide watch. In 2007, The Herald reported that children were being held alongside sex-offenders and criminals waiting to be deported.

After the 2010 UK General election, the new UK Coalition Government announced it would end the detention of children under 18 at Dungavel.

In 2015 a report by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons noted that detainees had been held for more than a year, and expressed concerns about their treatment.