A barge due to be used to house hundreds of asylum seekers in Dorset is not a prison but efforts will be made to avoid those living onboard needing to leave the port to access services in the local community, a minister has said.
As the government struggled to drum up support among local politicians for the plans, the transport minister Richard Holden claimed amenities such as doctors’ surgeries would be set up on site.
He said the barge and other similar planned projects would be “places for people to be safe and secure while their immigration claims and asylum claims are processed”.
In the short term, Holden acknowledged there would be a significant turnover of asylum seekers “moving in and out” as their applications were processed. But he stressed the move was designed to deter more people arriving in small boats across the Channel.
Asked if the first asylum seekers could be moved to the barge in Portland, Dorset, before the summer, he told Sky News “it could even be sooner than that”.
While Holden tried to play down the idea people would be detained on the barge – saying “it’s not a type of prison at all” – he said in areas where similar projects were planned people would be able to get off the boat but not leave the port.
In Portland, an island close to the popular seaside town of Weymouth, Holden suggested the Home Office would try to reduce the need for asylum seekers to leave the port where the barge is moored.
“One of the issues that a lot of people are worried about is what impacts they’ll have on local services,” Holden said. “And one of the things that we’re going to ensure with all of these sites is things like doctors facilities they will have on site and so that they can be processed there and looked after on site without the need to impact on local communities.”
But Peter Roper, the mayor of Portland, predicted that housing hundreds of people on the barge would “create a large impact on our existing local services” including the NHS and local policing. “I don’t totally believe it,” he said of suggestions the asylum seekers would be confined to the port.
Following what he called “very little consultation, if any” with the Home Office and port authorities, Roper said his impression was those who were having their asylum applications processed would be able to come and go as they please.
“As we understand it, this isn’t a prison. And although the port is a secure area, that these individuals will not be able to be detained within that area and will be allowed out on into the general areas of Portland and also other areas of south Dorset.”
Jess Phillips, the shadow minister for domestic violence and safeguarding, said the government had recently voted against Labour’s plans to require ministers to consult local authorities on housing asylum seekers. She criticised the barge as “another ridiculous gimmick”, saying the 500 people who will be housed on it was just 0.3% of the total number of people waiting to be processed.
Phillips told Sky News: “It just feels to me, I have to say, that they just want you to have this image of this barge for your news broadcast so it looks like they’re doing something. But this is – excuse the pun – a tiny drop in the ocean, and they should get on with clearing the backlog of the 166,000 cases.”
