24 September 2020

Before Inquiry Chair, Kate Eves
70 Fleet Street, London, EC4Y 1EU (and streamed online via YouTube)
25 September 2020, 2pm
 
A preliminary hearing for The Brook House Inquiry is taking place tomorrow at 2pm. The hearing will see the Chair, Kate Eves, open with an update on progress to date and the work the Inquiry has been doing since it was launched to gather evidence, identify witnesses and determine Core Participant status.
 
Gatwick Detainees Welfare Group have been granted Core Participant status, but other applications from national NGO’s have been provisionally refused. During the hearing, submissions will be made on behalf of INQUEST to seek to renew our application for Core Participant status, alongside other NGO’s Medical Justice, Bail for Immigration Detainees and Detention Action.
 
The Brook House Inquiry was set up to investigate the mistreatment of detainees at Brook House from April to August 2017 as depicted by the BBC’s Panorama programme, Under-Cover: Britain’s Immigration Secrets aired on 4 September 2017. The purpose of the Inquiry is to understand what happened at Brook House IRC, to identify learning and to make recommendations that would help to prevent a recurrence of such events.
 
INQUEST has a deep and evidence-based knowledge of how deaths in immigration detention represent the culmination of the inhuman and degrading treatment of those held in those conditions. Such deaths represent the end of a highly concerning spectrum of dehumanisation, lack of accountability, neglect and abuse.
 
Deborah Coles, Director of INQUEST said: “As the first inquiry into immigration detention following countless exposés and scandals showing abuse, this inquiry is long overdue and vitally important. Close scrutiny must be paid to the ill treatment, including racial abuse, of detainees at Brook House for changes to be made to prevent such mistreatment in the future.
 
INQUEST has supported numerous families whose relatives have suffered inhuman and degrading treatment and died in immigration detention. We hope the chair will realise our invaluable contribution and that the Inquiry will proceed without further delay.”
 
ENDS

NOTES TO EDITORS:

For further information, please contact Sarah Uncles on 020 7263 1111 or [email protected]
 
INQUEST is represented by INQUEST Lawyers Group Members Nick Armstrong of Matrix Chambers, Jesse Nicholls of Doughty Street Chambers and Joanna Thomson and Mark Hylands of Deighton Pierce Glynn.

• More information on the Brook House Inquiry is available on the Inquiry website.
• The preliminary hearing will be streamed live on YouTube from 2pm and an agenda is available here.