Examination of Witnesses (Questions 240-259)
MR TOM
DAVIES AND
MR MICHAEL
PAYNE
TUESDAY 28 JANUARY 2003
240. Have you said that to IND?
(Mr Payne) Not personally.
241. Has your company spoken to them about that?
(Mr Payne) I do not know the answer to that.
242. I think an answer is coming.
(Mr Payne) We have raised that with them, sir, yes.
Mr Prosser
243. I would like to raise the issue of people
who violently resist removal. Can you tell us how you manage those
situations and perhaps what proportion of the whole make-up for
violence that represents.
(Mr Payne) A very small proportion of the whole. That
is undoubtedly the case. We use what is known as control and restraint
techniques. We purchased the techniques from the Prison Service
and we now have our own in-house team of instructors, all of whom
are officers who go through what is known as basic control and
restraint techniques. It involves the use of a three-man team
and is based on locks to the body. To say that we use those sort
of techniques to board a person would be very few and far between
because, quite frankly, the captain would refuse to take anybody
on board who is having to be put on a flight in those circumstances.
244. When you say that it is a low proportion,
is that less than 25% or less than 10% or infrequent?
(Mr Payne) Less than 25% and probably less than 10%.
245. Can you tell us about any injuries caused
to people you have forcibly removed.
(Mr Payne) Each and every occasion on which we use
control and restraint has to be the subject of a report to the
authority and that is carried out meticulously.
246. We have heard anecdotal evidence of mistreatment
of those being removed and of abuse, even physical abuse. What
actions do you take to monitor the behaviour of your own staff
and in which way does the Home Office monitor your overall performance?
(Mr Payne) The situation in relation to complaints
like that is that the complaint is logged and investigated individually
and, where there is a complaint against an officer, the investigation
is carried out in company with the Immigration Service. It is
not just a company investigation.
247. Can you confidently rebut those allegations
referred to in the newspapers and elsewhere?
(Mr Payne) I have not brought statistics with me this
morning as to the number of complaints that are justified but
it is really very, very small; I would say less than five per
year substantiated complaints.
248. You have mentioned the procedure for complaints
but how does that actually happen? Let us take the person who
is allegedly attacked or hurt or damaged in some way during his/her
removal to the home country. He/she arrives in the home country
and what happens next? How can he/she take action?
(Mr Payne) She would make a communication to either
her legal representative in this country or in her own country
or even just write to the authority or to ourselves.
249. Does that system work?
(Mr Payne) I can think of one occasion when that has
happened and the complaint was investigated and was found to be
unsubstantiated.
250. What about removal of vulnerable people
and perhaps people with learning difficulties, perhaps women,
children and families? Do you take any special precautions when
dealing with these categories of people?
(Mr Payne) The answer to that is "yes".
We treat all detainees and deportees with the utmost care depending
on their circumstances. In relation to the question as to what
measures are taken on board the aircraft, I will have to hand
that over to Tom Davies because we are not charged with that responsibility.
(Mr Davies) Effectively, we have that responsibility
and, in the make-up of my team of detainee custody officers, I
have psychiatric nurses, registered general nurses, paramedics,
males and females, and the medically qualified people are all
trained detainee custody officers and that is what they do, they
fly all the time. So, somebody with a psychiatric illness would
be accompanied by a psychiatrically qualified nurse as a member
of that team. If we remove a family, there would be more than
one female DCO and probably one of them would be fully medically
trained, in other words with a PIN number qualification registered
general nurse or paramedic. We account for it quite carefully,
to be perfectly honest.
251. In instances where families have been removed,
we have heard stories of children being separated from their mothers
and their families.
(Mr Davies) No, that does not happen.
252. You rebut that; it does not happen?
(Mr Davies) You will occasionally remove a mother
and children and leave the father behind because he has disappeared.
I can think of one or possibly two cases where we have removed
a husband and children because the wife has disappeared. As far
as forcibly removing minors on their own, the answer is "no".
We do take minors on their own, but that is all done on arrangement
with IND and their reception is arranged in the country of arrival.
Mr Prosser: I think we are coming to
that later.
Mr Clappison
253. Just going back to the subject of violence,
are you satisfied with the intelligence which you have received
about people's propensity towards violence?
(Mr Davies) I do not think you could ever be satisfied
with the information that you get. The risk assessment on an individual
is a living animal, if I can put it that way. An assessment made
a year ago can be entirely different to the assessment of that
individual's demeanour in the 24/36 hours prior to his removal
and it is something that we are quite hot on. Risk assessment
is a prime feature in our activities.
254. Do you have cases where your staff have
suffered injuries as a result of this?
(Mr Davies) We have suffered no direct serious injuries
as a result of somebody being violent against us. There have been
the odd consequential injuries where somebody has fallen down
a set of steps or something like that, which you could directly
apportion to the activity of a returnee on the steps of the aircraft
but they are very, very small.
255. You said earlier on in response to questions
that, in the case of a violent person, the airline might refuse
to take them because they are so violent.
(Mr Davies) We have a system with the escorted removal
cases where our team leader, as a matter of routine, will pre-board
the aircraft and discuss the case with the captain of the craft
and the cabin services director/purser running the cabin. I would
be lying if I said to you that we always pre-board; we attempt
to pre-board inevitably and achieve that in probably 99.9% of
cases on our scheduled flight removals. We never lie to the aircrew.
If we have somebody in the vehicle on the apron who we feel is
going to cause a problem, we tell them because, quite frankly,
there is not an awful lot of point in us using control and restraint
techniques on an individual, probably handcuffing them, and forcing
them aboard the aircraft when the captain of the aircraft has
already made his mind up, "I'm not having anybody on board
my plane who is slightly violent". So, it is a judgment call
by my team leader on each individual case and a lot will depend
on the airline.
Chairman
256. Dealing now with arrival at destination,
which I think is Mr Davies's department, what happens at a destination?
(Mr Davies) It will vary from country to country.
Some countries insist on us handing the individual over to their
own authorities, which we do, and, as we are flying frequently
into what we call regular destinations, we know how to handle
those. I will give you an example. In China, for instance, in
Beijing, we are always met by their own immigration authorities,
the individual is handed over to them, we are asked a number of
questions and they are taken away. Down in Lagos, for instance,
the agreement that we have there is that we actually hand the
returnee over to the ground staff of either British Airways or
Virgin Atlantic, the two airlines flying in there. Standing right
next to them are the Nigerian immigration officers who watch that
process and then we walk away from it. If they have a query, they
talk to us. It varies from country to country.
257. What happens in Algeria?
(Mr Davies) They are handed over in Algeria to the
authorities and effectively the authorities in Algeria are not
really that interested. Certainly as far as our experience with
them is concerned, we hand them over and they are out on to the
street relatively quickly.
258. How do you know that?
(Mr Davies) We watch them.
259. In other countries, do you take an interest
in what happens to them?
(Mr Davies) We take an interest in all of them.
| 
