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Date submitted

5 August 2026

Submitted by

Interested party

I object to the expansion of Haslar IRC in the strongest possible terms, upon legal, moral and administrative grounds, as well as because of the harm it would cause to the local community. Indefinite administrative detention, without charge, trial or sentence, is by definition arbitrary and such illegal, as it places the UK in breach of our international obligations as a signatory to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR, Article 9), International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR, Article 9) and European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR, Article 5). The absolute prohibition upon all forms of arbitrary detention is also a peremptory jus cogens principle of customary international law, universally recognised as permitting no exceptions nor derogations, even in times of war, public emergencies, or national security crises. The UK routinely locks up tens of thousands of people who have committed no crime other than to have been born in the wrong place and does so without giving them a release date, so that they are counting their time in custody up, wondering if they will ever get out, rather than being able to count their sentences down, as even those convicted of the most serious crimes are able to do. Countless studies have shown that this takes a disproportionate psychological toll upon often already deeply traumatised people, who have suffered through war, persecution, torture and threats to the lives and limbs of themselves and their loved ones, before making it here. It is a human rights abuse and a moral abhorrence that we detain people indefinitely and will doubtless come to be a prosecutable crime within the near future; one for which all those involved in the decision making process may rightly expect to be held to account. Recognising these facts and that there is no reasonable excuse for the numbers of people so detained and the concomitantly excessive size of the UK’s detention estate, the Conservative Government responded to the review by Stephen Shaw, into the welfare of vulnerable people in detention, by committing in 2016 drastically reduce both the duration of detention and the number of people detained. However, proposals to expand detention capacity through the expansion of Haslar and Campsfield fly in the face of this stated Government policy and would inevitably lead to an increase in the numbers of people subjected to this unjust, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. The expansion of Haslar IRC would therefore be illegal, immoral and contrary to the stated aims of the recent Tory administration, let alone the supposedly kinder, gentler and fairer form of governance which the new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham has promised. It must be rejected outright. In addition to all of the above arguments, any expansion of the IRC would be massively detrimental to local people and the local community as a whole. The building work and the running of an expanded centre would result in huge amounts of disruption to local businesses, increased traffic and air pollution and damage to the economy. More importantly though, it would be a hideous immoral stain upon the area, which could not help but to negatively emotionally and psychologically impact the local populace, and particularly local children. The children of the area would necessarily be scarred by the increased presence of such needless cruelty, just as those who have lived within the vicinity of concentration camps and other unjust detainment facilities always have been, should this proposal go ahead. We rightly teach them in schools to be kind and generous to one another and to all people. We should not be surprised when the cognitive dissonance, evoked by these instructions being at complete odds with the needless cruelty of the example that we set for them by our actions, causes them significant mental and emotional harm. If we are to have happy, healthy children grow up to be the morally upstanding pillars of the society of tomorrow that we might wish for, then we must serve them better. And we must begin by acting in accordance with the law, morality and stated Government policy, by rejecting any expansion to Haslar IRC.