Overview

• Home Office minister Seema Malhotra instructed officials to tell contractor Mitie to remove certain vacancies, though the department has not specified which posts must go.
• Several listings remained on the government’s Find a Job portal, including tutors for floristry, cake decorating, balloon craft, hairdressing and painting, plus a gym manager.
• Advertised salaries are about £31,585 for tutor roles and £38,873 for the gym manager, with earlier coverage totalling the listed posts at roughly £165,000 a year.
• Mitie said the activities form part of its contractual duty to support detainees’ physical and mental wellbeing, citing HM Inspectorate of Prisons findings that such provisions help manage detention stress.
• Health minister Stephen Kinnock called the adverts an excessive reading of obligations, as scrutiny intensifies over the long-running Heathrow IRC contract at the Harmondsworth–Colnbrook complex.