‘I understand why people compare asylum centre to a prison,’ says Doctors of the World manager

Bex Kerr is Project Manager at Doctors of the World. The organisation, in partnership with Doctors Without Borders, runs a mobile clinic at Wethersfield that she visits regularly. We talked to her and asked what she thought of the conditions of the men living there.

Bex Kerr: A lot of the men tell us that the site feels like a prison to them, and I would say the same as well. From the outside, there’s a lot of barbed wire. It’s extremely isolated. It’s about a 20 minute drive from the nearest big town, ten minutes from the nearest village. You walk in, there’s a lot of security, a lot of barbed wire. It’s the communal spaces don’t often feel particularly well looked after or well facilitated. I definitely understand why people do compare it to a prison.

Cathy Newman: Clearly the men are free to come and go as they please, and in response to our report, the Home Office and the private contractor, Clearsprings, told us that the welfare of the people housed there are of the utmost priority. What do you make of that?

Bex Kerr: People are free to come and go, yes. As I said, it is extremely isolated and people don’t receive a lot of money, so there’s very little for them to do if they do go outside. We also find a lot of people are experiencing such severe mental distress that leaving is actually very challenging, and getting on the bus to go to the town, where you then walk around for a few hours with nothing to do, is probably not the best use of your time. So a lot of people actually aren’t leaving the site. They don’t feel comfortable to do so. I think we speak to a lot of people that feel very unsafe on the site. They feel very stressed. It’s exacerbating their mental health. And so we see people that are really deteriorating over the time that they spend on that site.

Cathy Newman: And what effect have the riots had on how people are feeling inside in terms of their own fears for their safety?

Bex Kerr: We definitely have had people speak of their concerns about their safety. But I think this is one thing amongst many that is already extremely challenging for the people on this site on a daily basis. They have to live, as I said, in conditions that they often feel are prison like. They are also often sharing rooms, sometimes up to six a room. And they’re sleep deprived. They’re not able to sleep properly because different people are doing different things, and they feel very isolated from the country that they’ve just arrived in, from the communities they were hoping to meet, and this is just one thing on top of that that adds to that stress.

Cathy Newman: Labour has suggested that they’ll close Wethersfield, and that’s something I know you support. But what would happen to the 600 men inside? Where else can they go, given that you’ve seen in the riots, for example, that asylum hotels are being targeted themselves?

Bex Kerr: I think what this shows more than ever is that there is a real need for safe housing, for dignified housing, for housing that’s in communities, for people to be able to feel integrated, to feel welcome, and to have those chances to properly integrate into those communities as well.

Cathy Newman: But there’s a housing crisis at the moment. So I just wonder how in practice that would work given the number of men housed here.

Bex Kerr: I can’t speak to that unfortunately, but what I can speak to is that anyone deserves safe housing. Anyone deserves to be in a dignified place where they feel safe and secure. And that’s really our priority. We don’t see that at Wethersfield unfortunately.

Cathy Newman: I know you have called for the closure of Wethersfield, but is there an alternative to keep it open but to improve some of these issues that you’ve raised and that our report has raised?

Bex Kerr: Doctors of the World and MSF UK have worked in large sites across the world at the moment. We’ve worked in Nauru, we’ve worked in Greece, where there are similar large sites. We see the same thing over and over again. It has significant impacts on people’s mental health and wellbeing and their health as well more broadly. So we would say no, there’s not a possibility for that. The nature of the site itself exacerbates this mental health crisis that we’re seeing.