Pressure is mounting on home secretary Suella Braverman over chaotic scenes and poor conditions at a migrant centre in Kent, just days after she was reappointed to the Cabinet. New prime minister Rishi Sunak came under fire for giving Ms Braverman her old job back last week after she resigned days earlier over a breach of the ministerial code.
Now, the embattled home secretary is facing questions around severe overcrowding and ill health at the Manston refugee holding facility, which one Tory MP described as a "breach of humane conditions". It comes after hundreds of migrants were moved into the facility for safety reasons following a petrol bomb being let off at a processing site in Dover, where thousands of migrants arrive each month after treacherous Channel crossings.
The Manston site is a short-term holding facility, which opened in January as a centre where security and identity checks are carried out on migrants after they arrive in the UK at Dover. Detainees are only meant to be held there for a maximum of 24 hours before they are moved onto longer-term accommodation, such as hotels.
It is understood that there are currently around 4,000 people at the Kent facility, some of which have been there for more than a month, despite the facility having a capacity of just 1,600. Chief inspector of borders and immigration David Neal said he was left “speechless” by the “pretty wretched conditions” during a recent visit to the centre, telling the Common Home Affairs he saw families having to sleep on the floor in marquees for weeks at a time and that it was a “really dangerous situation”.
Chief inspector of prisons, Charlie Taylor, said the facilities "are not set up for people to be staying". He told the BBC: "It’s not a residential facility. It’s a short-term holding facility which is supposed to process people through. So the danger is if people are spending long periods of time in what are very cramped conditions without suitable accommodation that’s just not acceptable.”
Sir Roger Gale, the Conservative MP for North Thanet, where the facility is located, described the situation as “wholly unacceptable” and said he regards what is happening at Manston as "a breach of humane conditions". He suggested that issues with overcrowding may have been allowed to happen “deliberately” and that the crisis developed due to a 'policy decision' not to book alternative accommodation.
The MP claimed he was initially told that the Home Office was finding it very difficult to secure hotel accommodation - but said he now understands that the decision was taken not to book additional hotel space, which the home secretary has denied. “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," Sir Roger said. “The car crash was the decision not to book more hotel space."
According to the BBC, the home secretary was warned by officials that the government was acting outside the law by failing to provide alternative accommodation. Sources said her predecessor Priti Patel had been 'reluctant' to spend money on hotel accommodation for refugees who needed to be moved away from the site, but did so in line with her legal duty. However, Ms Braverman chose not to, they said.
Former Home Office mandarin Sir David Normington said that Ms Braverman may have committed another breach of the ministerial code if it is true that she deliberately did not book hotels to address overcrowding at Manston. Sir David, who was permanent secretary in the Home Office for six years, told BBC Radio 4’s World at One: “If it was deliberate, it’s a very serious matter. It’s potentially another breach of the ministerial code because home secretaries, ministers, have to obey the law."
However, a defiant Ms Braverman today addressed MPs in the House of Commons and flatly denied that she 'blocked' the use of hotels to house refugees. Delivering a statement on the concerns around Manston and the events at Western Jet Foil in Dover, Ms Braverman said she “never ignored legal advice” and had provided additional resources to deliver "a rapid increase in emergency accommodation".
“To be clear, like the majority of the British people I am very concerned about hotels but I have never blocked their usage," she told MPs. “Indeed since I took over 12,000 people have arrived, 9,500 people have been transferred out of Manston or Western Jet Foil, many of them into hotels. And I have never ignored legal advice, as a former attorney general I know the importance of taking legal advice into account.”
Ms Braverman said she was determined to address the backlog in asylum claims and the number of migrants living in hotels. She claimed that putting asylum seekers up in hotels was costing the taxpayer £6.8 million a day, adding that she was "appalled" to find out that there were over 35,000 migrants staying in hotel accommodation "at exorbitant cost to the taxpayer" when she was first appointed as home secretary.
She claimed she had worked to find alternative accommodation for people held at Manston "at every point" while in office. She told MPs: "Since September 6 over 30 new hotels have been agreed, providing over 4,500 additional hotel bed spaces. That’s been under my watch. That’s been when I’ve been in charge of the Home Office.”
Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper told MPs that the Manston site had seen "confirmed diphtheria outbreaks, reports of scabies and MSRA outbreaks, and reports of outbreaks of violence and untrained staff" since it opened at the beginning of the year. Addressing reports of ill health at the facility, Ms Braverman said: "There are very good medical facilities there, all protocols have been followed. People are being fed, they are being clothed, they are being sheltered.”
Responding to another Labour MP, Rachael Maskell, who declared that conditions at the site were "unsafe and inhumane", the home secretary said: “Whilst the issue at Manston is indisputably concerning. I don’t want us to create alarm unnecessarily, so when she talks about the language that she uses, I do gently urge her not to use inflammatory language.”
Addressing a wider "global migration crisis", Ms Braverman claimed that “some 40,000 people” have crossed the English channel this year, which she said was "an unprecedented number of attempts to illegally cross the channel in small boats" and more than double the number of arrivals by the same point last year.
Ms Braverman also told MPs that the firebomb attack on Western Jet Foil was not being treated as a terrorist incident. Kent Police said the suspect, who was later found dead at a nearby petrol station, was 66 years old and from the High Wycombe area in Buckinghamshire. Sir Roger told the House of Commons that the suspect had been suffering from “very severe mental health difficulties”.
Officers were called at 11.22am on Sunday (October 30) and found that two to three incendiary devices had caused a fire. The Explosive Ordnance Disposal Unit attended and made sure there were no further threats. Another device was found and confirmed safe within the suspect’s vehicle, police said.
The site remained open although 700 people were moved to Manston asylum processing centre in Kent for safety reasons. Ms Braverman said: “Fortunately, there were only two minor injuries. But this is a shocking incident. And my thoughts are with all of those who are affected. I have received regular updates from the police. While I understand the desire for answers, investigators must have the necessary space to work.”
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