If anyone ever doubted there were problems at the Campsfield House detention centre, the events of the past week have underlined the need for urgent action.

The latest Home Office report into disturbances in March at the centre in Kidlington proved prophetic. Civil servant Robert Whalley had warned that an influx of foreign prisoners who had completed their jail sentences was having a major impact on the centre. The report made it clear that those prisoners who had completed their sentences should either be released back into the community, or immediately deported.

Within days of the report's publication, detainees in just that category staged a mass break-out, leading to a major police operation and understandable concern among people living in the immediate area.

These men were convicted criminals with no right to be in this country, who broke out of a supposedly secure detention centre after fires were started.

One unsettling issue has been the reluctance of the Florida firm GEO, which runs the centre on behalf of the Border and Immigration Agency, to discuss with us the recent events.

What is inevitable is that yet another report will be prepared into life at Campsfield.

Dr Evan Harris, the MP for Oxford West and Abingdon, in whose constituency the centre falls, is right to press the Government to set out clearly how it is going to implement the necessary changes already demanded by its own review, and by successive reports from HM Inspector of Prisons.