treatment of asylum seekers at the Villawood detention centre, noting that their prolonged detention was causing serious mental problems.

It noted that some detainees sewed their lips together in protest at their treatment.

Commission president Catherine Branson said: "What we saw at Villawood was the result of the system of mandatory and indefinite detention, where people can see no end in sight because there is no set time limit on the period a person can be held in detention," she said.

Over the past nine months there have been six deaths in Australia's detention centre network, five of which appeared to be suicide.

In the past six weeks there have also been two major riots, first at the Christmas Island offshore detention centre in the Indian Ocean and then at Villawood inVW emissions scandal broke a year ago, many VW group cars fitted with illegal software have been recalled in Europe, and 660,000 vehicles from Renault, Fiat, Opel and Mercedes could be voluntarily recalled, if their owners request it.

But no other action has been taken to fix the millions of excessively polluting vehicles on the continent’s roads, 69% of which were sold in the UK, Germany, France and Italy.

Diesel cars' emissions far higher on road than in lab, tests show Read more

France is the only one of these countries to support independent emissions tests in meetings of the relevant EU working party, according to T&E.

Modest requirements for the EU to monitor national emissions tests and ensure that regulators are consistently applying rules have also been watered down in the