OFFICIAL assessments that housing asylum-seekers on the Bibby Stockholm barge was discriminatory were deleted today after they were published online by mistake.

The impact assessment, which deemed the policy of housing asylum-seekers on the barge and former air base to be “directly discriminating in relation to age [and] sex” because the barge is only suitable for men aged 18 to 65, was deleted from the government’s website two days after being published.

A note on the website said that the impact assessment had been “published in error.”

An impact assessment for the former RAF base at Wethersfield that reached similar conclusions was also removed from the government’s website the day after being published.

The government has previously declined to publish an equality impact assessment for the Bibby Stockholm.

In September, then immigration minister Robert Jenrick, in response to a written parliamentary question, told Labour MP Zarah Sultana that such assessments were “for internal use” and “not routinely published.”

The assessment published on Wednesday noted that the Equality Act allowed for such discrimination if it was “justified as a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.”

Housing asylum-seekers on the Bibby Stockholm and at Wethersfield has drawn opposition from migrant rights campaigners.

Charlotte Khan of Care4Calais said the public had a right to know how survivors of war, torture and modern slavery were being treated by the government.

“Deleting the equality impact assessments from the Home Office website may remove an official watermark from the government’s mistreatment of asylum-seekers but, every day, behind the barbed wire fences, people’s health and wellbeing is suffering from being held in these prison-like barges and camps,” she said.

The Home Office was contacted for comment.