Former G4S manager speaks out over conditions at immigration centre

The Rev Nathan Ward, vicar of St Margaret's Church in Rainham, talks about his experience of helping with the Brook House inquiry

Transcript

00:00 The BBC Panorama documentary showed physical abuse being meted out on detainees,

00:07 some of the most vulnerable detainees in the country with significant mental health issues.

00:12 We saw healthcare professionals not carry out their duties and in fact one of them

00:19 has subsequently been struck off by the professional bodies.

00:25 We've seen phosphication of paperwork as well and all of this is on a backdrop of a government policy

00:35 which seeks to be a hostile place for immigration. Now let's be very clear, the government have a

00:43 democratic right to remove those who have no lawful reason to be in this country but in doing

00:49 that we must strive to do things better and more humanely because actually what's clear

00:56 is that the system isn't working, we've got it wrong and we have to rethink. What is clear from

01:03 the evidence that's been presented to the inquiry over many months is that abuse took place within

01:10 the centre, that things happened that should never happen in the name of our government and it's for

01:19 the report tomorrow to actually show what's gone wrong and hopefully point out how we can prevent

01:28 these abuses taking place.