Yarl’s Wood is cutting costs. We know what that means…

Staff are being replaced by “self-service kiosks” at the troubled Yarl’s Wood immigration detention centre as the main way of driving through a £42m cut in the costs of a new Home Office contract to run the centre, it has been disclosed.

A report by the National Audit Office (NAO) published on Thursday also reveals that some women have refused to go on “humiliating” hospital visits after a tougher Home Office policy made it more likely they would be handcuffed on outside visits.

Handcuffs – as if immigration were a violent crime.

Let’s take a look back.

A former senior Serco official who worked inside the Yarl’s Wood immigration detention centre has alleged that an anti-immigration culture was “endemic” among staff, and that vulnerable women have been deported without their mental health being properly assessed.

The claims came after the Observer revealed last week that the private outsourcing giant is to be investigated by MPs when it was forced to disclose a secret internal report revealing evidence that it failed to properly investigate a claim of repeated sexual assaults by one of its staff against a female resident.

The whistleblower also claimed that another alleged case of sexual assault by a Serco member of staff occurred in August 2012, involving a particularly vulnerable detainee with profound psychological issues. It is understood she has since been deported.

The claims come from the first senior employee to have broken rank since the immigration detention centre – which is so tightly guarded that the Home Office recently banned the United Nations from entry – opened in 2001.

The whistleblower claims Yarl’s Wood is not fit for purpose and that he detected a culture of disbelief towards female detainees, claims which are rejected by Serco.

He said: “Officers would say openly: ‘They need to go back, they need to leave the country, they’re only coming here to use NHS resources.’ A common phrase was: ‘They’re only putting it on to block their removal.’ I’ve actually heard [senior staff] say: ‘These people are putting it on.’ It was endemic … even the senior management structures were saying this, it was a mindset.”

Oh well – now it’s all kiosks, so problem solved.