Recommendation 19: Healthcare staff guidance and training on use of force incidents
From The Brook House Inquiry Report, published 19 September 2023.
Recommendation
The Home Office must ensure that guidance is issued to healthcare staff in immigration removal centres clarifying their role in use of force incidents. It must liaise as necessary with NHS England and any relevant medical regulators. The Home Office must ensure that mandatory training is introduced for healthcare staff, and those responsible for managing them, on their roles and responsibilities in relation to planned and unplanned use of force (liaising with NHS England and any other relevant parties). The training must be subject to an assessment.
In brief (written by this site)
In a letter of May 2025, quoted in a court judgment of July 2025, Dame Angela Eagle, Minister for Border Security and Asylum at the Home Office, stated that healthcare staff do not undertake use of force, while noting that the NHS England Clinical Reference Group was working to produce an aligned guidance document for immigration removal centre healthcare providers (Dame Angela Eagle, May 2025). The Minister had previously confirmed in a written parliamentary answer of January 2025 that the department had rejected the recommendation following full consideration (Dame Angela Eagle response, Jan 2025; Dame Angela Eagle, Jan 2025).
AI-generated summary of the record on this page, checked by a second model and automatic checks, 27 Sep 2026. The record below is the sources' own words.
Government response
Following full consideration three recommendations (recommendations 7, 19 and 30) have been rejected.
How this response relates to the recommendation
Site note: The source gives this passage once, for the three recommendations it says were rejected. The same words are recorded on recommendations 7, 19 and 30.
Delivery
Home Office says not accepted (22 May 2025)
It is not within the remit of healthcare staff within an IRC to undertake use of force. Healthcare staff need to be aware of the use of force mechanisms in place within establishments and have a role in ensuring the safety of patients post any use of force. Use of force guidance and policy frameworks exist for healthcare staff working across prison, health, mental health and community settings. The NHS England Clinical Reference Group are working to produce an aligned use of force guidance document for IRC healthcare providers.
From: R (D1914 and AAA) v Secretary of State for the Home Department; R (AVY) v Secretary of State for the Home Department, Dame Angela Eagle, Minister for Border Security and Asylum
Site note: These are the words of the letter of 22 May 2025 from the Minister for Border Security and Asylum to Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP, as reproduced in the judgment in R (D1914 and AVY) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2025] EWHC 1853 (Admin). The letter itself is not published: it is on GOV.UK nowhere, was not deposited in Parliament and is not annexed to the judgment, so the judgment is the record that carries it and is the source this row cites. The judgment quotes it on this recommendation at paragraph 207.
Responsible bodies
Themes and tags
Who has spoken
- Home Office
Response, delivery statement