IMMIGRATION detainees are being locked up for 13 hours a day to save money on staffing and pump up profits for private contractors, the High Court heard today.

Three former detainees in the notorious Brook House removal centre, near Gatwick, are taking legal action against allegedly “unlawful” conditions at the site where they were locked up for 13 hours a day. 

The three, who are all refugees from Afghanistan, were locked up in “small, dirty and unhygienic” rooms from 9pm to 8am every day as well as two one-hour lock-ins each afternoon. 

They claim that the “lock-in regime” breached their human rights to liberty and privacy.

Addressing the court in London, the claimants’ representative Stephanie Harrison QC said that the lock-in regime at Brook House was “significantly more restrictive” than at other removal centres. 

The regime was introduced and maintained by security firm G4S which ran the site up until last year when the contract was taken over by Serco. 

The lawyer claimed that this showed it was the “contractual arrangements in existence and costs, including G4S profits, that dictate the regime,” rather than the “statutory requirement for relaxed and humane conditions.” 

“It is the staff levels and therefore the cost that have dictated the decision-making about the nature of the lock-in hours, rather than … the requirements of the rules,” she continued. 

Ms Harrison also claimed the disparity between removal centres demonstrated that the Home Office has “in effect surrendered and/or abdicated its responsibilities” to private firms.

G4S made £14.3 million in profit from running Brook House between 2012 and 2018, according to the National Audit Office. 

Two of the claimants were detained at the same time as an undercover investigation by the BBC exposed serious abuse at Brook House between May to November 2017, including an officer strangling a detainee. 

A public probe was triggered by the report and is in the process of gathering evidence. 

The case follows on from a previous judgement which found that locking up detainees for up to 13 hours overnight amounted to indirect discrimination against two Muslim detainees. 

This is because it forced them to pray next to unscreened toilets in unsanitary and overcrowded conditions. The claimants were also represented by Duncan Lewis Lawyers. 

Home Office lawyers argued that to describe Brook House as akin to a category B prison was incorrect and overlooked the “considerable freedoms detainees enjoy.”

Mr Justice Cavanagh will hear the case over three days.