Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will take steps to ensure that women detained in Yarl's Wood Immigration Removal Centre can obtain feminine hygiene products without contact with male guards.

The Home Office and its service providers comply with all relevant employment
legislation. The service provider for Yarl's Wood immigration removal centre,
Serco, is required under their contract to employ sufficient female officers to
enable appropriate searching and security arrangements for female detainees.
Yarl's Wood IRC has 52% male detainee custody officers and 48% female.

Assessment Care in Detention and Teamwork (ACDT) is the system used for
monitoring individuals considered to be at risk of self harm and operates
within the broader context of decency, safety, and the concept of a healthy
centre.

ACDT requires centre managers to appoint trained assessors and named case
managers in order to provide individualised care to detainees based on their
particular needs. A female assessor or case manager should be appointed where
it is appropriate but that is not a requirement.

Feminine hygiene items are freely available to residents. Access to these is
not monitored by staff.