THE HOME OFFICE has been ordered to release information it sought to keep secret regarding the at least five people who died in its asylum-seeker accommodation in the first six months of 2023.
A four-month investigation by the Information Commissioner’s Office found that the Home Office’s arguments to withhold the information don’t hold up, and that it must disclose the information by April 4.
In July 2023, The Civil Fleet sent a Freedom of Information Request (FOI) to the Home Office asking the following:
1) The number of asylum seekers who died in Home Office accommodation between 1 January 2023 to 30 June 2023.
2) The cause and location of each death, as well as their ages, nationalities, and gender.
The Home Office answered the first question in full.
According to its data at the time, five people died in the Home Office’s outsourced asylum-seeker accommodation in the first six months of 2023.
Suicide was listed as the cause of death for one of the deceased. This happened in March in the Northwest of England. The Home Office’s accommodation there is run by Serco.
The rest of the deaths were listed as “cause to be confirmed.”
Two people died in accommodations in the South of England, which are run by Clearsprings Ready Homes. One died in April; the other in June.
One person died in March while housed by Serco in the Midlands and East of England.
Another person died in March in Scotland, where Mears Group has been outsourced to run asylum-seeker accommodation.
“It’s been three years since the current asylum policy of refusing to take responsibility for tens of thousands of people’s claims began, but the government still appears to have nothing in place to monitor the true impact of this dire policy,” Amnesty International UK’s refugee and migrant rights director Steve Valdez-Symonds told The Civil Fleet.
“With a substantial rise in fatalities in the asylum system already identified, a bare minimum response would have been to record and assess the number and circumstances of these deaths.
“But ministers have chosen not to do that. They do not want to know – or want anyone else to know – the true costs, including to human life, of the policy they keep ratcheting up rather than ever face the fact that it is doing enormous harm.
“The consequences are already utterly dreadful and the longer this continues, the more lives will be ruined, even lost, to a miserable determination on the part of government to simply refuse to fairly and efficiently decide the claims that people make.”
Ann Salter, Freedom from Torture’s head of clinical services northwest, told The Civil Fleet that many of the asylum-seekers who receive clinical treatment with the organisation live in unsafe and unsuitable accommodation – “whether that’s in a hotel, self-contained unit, shared housing or even a shared room.
“Every day we see first-hand the impact that poor quality and hazardous housing has on survivors of torture – cold and damp conditions exacerbate physical harm caused by torture, and unhygienic and mouldy environments can lead to survivors feeling unsafe and so can trigger PTSD symptoms.
“For those who’ve just arrived in the UK and are trying to rebuild their lives, dangerous accommodation can compound an already difficult road to recovery.
“The government must urgently take steps to make sure that survivors and other refugees are housed in decent homes within our communities, where they have proper access to healthcare and other vital services.”
The Home Office’s arguments
The Home Office refused to provide the ages, nationalities and gender of the deceased, despite doing so in 2021, 2022 and early 2023.
Data provided from those requests showed that 46 people died while housed at Home Office asylum-seeker accommodation in 2022 — more than double the 19 deaths in 2021.
In fact, 22 people died in the Home Office’s care in the first six months of 2022 — more than in the whole of 2021.
Excluding five newborn babies, the average age of all those who died in 2022 was 45.2 years old, at a rate of 3.8 deaths per month.
The average age of those who died in 2021 was 40.3 years, with 1.5 deaths per month.
The Home Office justified its decision to keep the information secret this time by citing Section 38(1)(a) and (b) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA).
That section of the FOIA states that information can be exempt from disclosure if its release “would, or would likely, endanger the physical or mental health of any individual,” or “endanger the safety of any individual.”
The Home Office added that disclosing the ages, nationalities, and gender of those who died in its asylum-seeker accommodation could “identify the deceased and, by association, any family members and other asylum seekers.
“We believe that disclosure of this information would or would be likely to have a detrimental effect on the physical or mental health of any individual and could endanger the safety of any individual.”
The Home Office’s internal review determined in October that the original response was correct. [The Home Office says it aims to complete internal reviews within 20 working day, but this took 57.]
“I have determined that sections 38(1)(a) and (b) have been applied correctly in this instance,” the internal review said.
“I agree with the [original] decision that the balance of the public interest identified lies in favour of non-disclosure of the details relating to the deceased asylum seekers.
“This is because the overall public interest lies in protecting the families of the deceased individuals.”
In response to the Home Office deciding not to provide the ages, nationalities and gender of the dead this time (despite having done so on three prior occasions), the internal reviewer simply said: “Each request must be considered on a case by case basis.”
Enter the ICO
Later in October, The Civil Fleet filed a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).
The ICO’s decision notice, delivered on February 29, revealed that a reconsideration of the Home Office’s “handling of High Profile Notifications, in relation to asylum seekers and related requests made under the FOIA, took place in spring 2023.”
“This included a review of requests relating to deaths of asylum seekers. It explained that a decision was made to adopt a more risk-based approach to the disclosure of additional ‘identifier’ information in relation to deceased persons, based on legal advice and advice from information rights practitioners.”
The Home Office explained to the ICO that “each request is still considered individually on its merits, but it does not disclose detailed information about deceased asylum seekers, from which they could be identified, as a matter of course, as might previously have been the case.”
The decision notice also showed that it is not standard Home Office “practice to locate or attempt to contact a next of kin” of those who die in its care, “unless there is a surviving dependent on the Asylum Support package.”
While recognising that the withheld information may allow relatives or others previously close to the deceased to speculate that the information relates to them, the ICO said it “cannot see how the deceased individuals would be identified with absolute certainty.”
In regard to the Home Office’s information causing “a detrimental effect on the physical or mental health of any individual,” the ICO said it cannot see how this risk “would be a greater impact than causing upset and distress.”
The Commissioner said it was aware that the Home Office has previously disclosed deaths relating to asylum seekers in Home Office accommodation to The Civil Fleet.
“The Commissioner would expect that, were there any realistic risk of endangerment to any individual’s physical or mental health, the Home Office would have been able to evidence this after that information had been disclosed,” the ICO said.
“No actual evidence of any endangerment resulting from previous disclosure has been presented to the Commissioner.
“The Commissioner is therefore not persuaded that the Home Office’s arguments are sufficient to demonstrate a causal relationship between the endangerment to the physical or mental health of any individual and the disclosure of the requested information.
“He therefore finds that section 38(1)(a) of the FOIA is not engaged and the withheld information should be disclosed.”
The Home Office has until April 4 (“35 calendar days of the date of this decision notice”) to disclose all the requested information.
“Failure to comply may result in the Commissioner making written certification of this fact to the High Court pursuant to section 54 of the Act and may be dealt with as a contempt of court,” the ICO said.
The Home Office has the right to appeal against the ICO’s decision notice to the First-tier Tribunal (Information Rights).
Top image shows the Bibby Stockholm barge, in which the British government is housing asylum seekers [Pic: Ashley Smith Creative Commons]
The Civil Fleet 