The Home Office is hiring serial human rights abuser G4S to provide support to detained families awaiting deportation. We want the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) to look into why G4S keeps landing these cosy government contracts.

The security firm will take over family welfare support from children’s charity Barnardo’s. The children’s charity denounced the decision as not being “in the best interests of the children.”

G4S will now be tasked with supporting families awaiting deportation as they prepare for their resettlement. The Home Office contract with G4S exposes vulnerable children and families to the abuse and neglect that riddles G4S’s record.

The same company that was charged with using excessive force on child detainees has no place providing social services for the UK’s most vulnerable immigrant populations.

Urge the Public Accounts Committee to ensure the welfare of immigrant families and investigate the Home Office contract with G4S

The PAC have been critical of the government’s reliance on unaccountable corporations to handle public services, and of G4S for overcharging the government while providing inferior services.

Home Office claims that G4S can provide the “same key aspects of welfare support to families” as children’s charity Barnardo’s. But that’s hard to believe when G4S has a history of abuse, neglect, and unlawful death in their custody.

In 2011, father of five Jimmy Mubenga died in the custody of G4S while being deported to Angola. A jury found he had been “unlawfully killed,” and an investigation reported racist text messages on the phones of two G4S guards tasked with his removal.

Just last May, the Ministry of Justice relieved G4S from operating Medway youth jail in Kent after a BBC undercover report showed use of excessive force on children.

These cases are just a small fraction of G4S’s track record that proves it’s unqualified to run prisons -- let alone provide welfare services to families being detained there.

We’ve come together before to question the government’s cosy relationship with G4S, like when we fought their decision to hand over the UK’s discrimination hotline to the multinational. Now, we need to demand the PAC look into why, with its history of neglect, G4S keeps being handed these government contracts.

Let’s stand with detained families to ensure they receive the welfare services they deserve -- services G4S has no place providing.

We want the public accounts committee to look into the government’s relationship with G4S

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