THE Home Secretary is facing questions over the “wholly unacceptable” conditions at an immigration centre in Kent – with one Tory MP describing the situation there as a “breach of humane conditions”.
Roger Gale has submitted an urgent question about overcrowding at the Manston site, suggesting the conditions may have been allowed to develop “deliberately”.
It comes amid concerns over the conditions of sites where migrants await processing, after one in Dover was firebombed on Sunday.
According to Gale (below), there are now more than 4000 people at the facility, despite it being designed for just 1600 people at a time.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he said: “There are simply far too many people and this situation should never have been allowed to develop, and I’m not sure that it hasn’t almost been developed deliberately.”
The Home Office is struggling to find hotel accommodation, he said, adding that he now understands that this is a policy issue and a decision was taken not to book additional hotel space.
“That’s like driving a car down a motorway, seeing the motorway clear ahead, then there’s a car crash, and then suddenly there’s a five-mile tailback.
“The car crash was the decision not to book more hotel space,” he said.
People should only be held at the facility for 24 hours while undergoing checks, before being moved into detention centres of asylum accommodation – but the independence chief inspector of borders and immigration David Neal said last week that he had spoken to a family from Afghanistan who had been living in a marquee there for a month.
Other families, from Iraq and Syria, had been sleeping on mats on the floor with blankets for weeks. Neal said there was four cases of diphtheria confirmed during a site visit on October 24.
On Sunday night, former prisons inspector and parole board chair Nick Hardwick tweeted declaring the conditions at Manston a “national disgrace”.
He went on: “Hundred illegally detained on the whim of a politician. [Sic] Women and children including from Iran sleeping on mats on the floors of tents for weeks as winter approaches. Diseases of the past rife. And now firebombs. Appalling.”
However speaking to GB News on Monday, food minister Mark Spencer said the accommodation is “quite reasonable”.
“We're talking about people who've been exploited who've literally had their life savings taken off them, put on an unseaworthy craft and pushed across the channel by unscrupulous people who are exploiting them,” he said.
“We have a responsibility to look after them, to process them quickly, and to work out who's a genuine asylum seeker and who should be returned to a safe country.”
