Home Office set to pull ‘balloon-craft’ job at migrant detention centre

The government has ordered the removal of an advertisement for a job teaching migrants facing deportation about balloon-craft, cake decorating and other craft skills.

The hospitality and floristry tutor role would have involved running workshops on arts and craft activities.

Home Office minister Seema Malhotra instructed the contractor, Mitie, to remove the ads after the Sun reported plans to hire the tutors for the Heathrow immigration removal centre.

Conservative shadow home secretary Chris Philp criticised the roles as “pouring taxpayers’ money into perks when every effort should be on deportations”.

The job adverts said applicants must “promote, design, as necessary, and deliver workshops in relevant creative skills including floristry, cake decorating, balloon-craft, arts and craft activities to meet the needs of the residents and contractual requirements”.

Another, for a painting and decorating tutor, was intended to “proactively promote, design and deliver painting and decorating workshops to resdent (sic)”.

Both positions were advertised as paying £31,585 per year.

Malhotra has now told Mitie to remove the positions.

She said: “We do not believe all these roles are necessary and have told the Home Office to speak to Mitie to remove them.”

A senior Home Office source said these roles would have offered activities that went beyond the statutory requirements covering the treatment of detainees.

The source said the department was now looking at activities that were being offered across the immigration detention estate but could not be more specific about what sorts of activities would be deemed acceptable.

The Conservatives said the jobs were inexcusable.

“Hiring gym managers and balloon craft tutors for people who must be removed is indefensible and must be stopped immediately,” Philp said.

“If you come here illegally, you should not be rewarded with courses and comforts, you should be deported swiftly.”

But asylum seekers’ rights charity Detention Action said the government had a “duty” to provide roles like this.

The charity’s director James Wilson said: “The government should only use immigration detention as a last resort, and for the shortest time necessary. They are failing spectacularly on both counts.

“In the last year, the Home Office detained thousands of people for months or even years at a time, and more than 60% of them were later released.

“Until a time limit on detention is introduced, the government has a duty to support the mental health and wellbeing of the people it detains.”

The contractor Mitie, a facilities management company, has signed several deals with the Home Office to provide immigration services, including two next to the UK’s busiest airport.

Heathrow’s Colnbrook and Harmondsworth IRC facilities are the largest immigration removal centre in Europe, holding up to 965 residents.

A spokesman for Mitie said the roles were for activities supporting the “physical and mental wellbeing of detained individuals” and were “part of our contractual obligations”.

He added: “The impact of these services was highlighted in the recent His Majesty’s Inspector of Prisons report into Harmondsworth, which said that these provisions contributed to a greater overall focus on helping individuals to manage the stresses of detention.”

A report published last year found that conditions at the west London immigration centre were “the worst” in the country, and put detainees at “imminent risk of harm”.

It added that drug use and violence at the centre were “widespread”.