Anger at plans to expand Dungavel

THE Home Office has spent months secretly planning the expansion of Dungavel detention centre amid nationwide calls for its closure, it was confirmed yesterday.

Rosie Kane, the Scottish Socialist list MSP for Glasgow, said: "The Home Office have been playing Jack McConnell for a fool. While 80% of Scots want Dungavel closed, the Home Office have been planning all through the summer to expand it. It looks to us as though Westminster doesn't want Scotland's powers so much devolved as dissolved.
"Surely now the first minister, who has been coming on the hard man all week in relation to Scotland's justice system, has to stand up to the little Englanders who run the Home Office and who are determined to run a detention camp on Scottish soil that the people and elected representatives of the Scottish Parliament have no control over."

...Ms Kane flies to Dublin today to assist a socialist member of the Irish parliament who supported the case of Mercy Ikolo, who was detained in Dungavel and allowed into the MSP's care pending a Home Office decision on her future.
Joe Higgins was jailed after protesting about taxation and taking up the case of Ms Ikolo and her daughter, who was born in Ireland. "With Joe now in the jail for taking a principled stand, I need to raise Mercy's voice in the Dail," Ms Kane said. The Herald