The Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, is coming under mounting pressure to explain the government’s plans to deal with conditions at the asylum processing centre at Manston in Kent. Last week, the chief inspector of borders and immigration David Neal told MPs that the position at Manston was “unsafe, understaffed and wretched”.
Currently 4,000 migrants are said to be being held at the disused Manston airport, some 2,500 more than the centre is designed to hold. The centre is also said to be suffering from an outbreak of diphtheria with a number of families living in marquees.
The numbers being held at the Manson camp have grown further overnight as hundreds of migrants were moved from a nearby processing centre in Dover following a firebomb attack.
There also continues to be a significant number of migrant boat crossings coming into Kent. The Ministry of Defence reporting that some 990 migrants crossed the channel on Saturday in 24 small boats.
In response to the situation, the Labour Party is set to raise an urgent question in the House of Commons this afternoon, as it continues its attacks on the home secretary, Suella Braverman. Ms Braverman is still facing questions over the timeline of events surrounding her resignation earlier in the month.
Speaking yesterday on Sky News, the shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said, “The government is still pursing, spending £140 million now, on a Rwanda deal that the home secretary herself has admitted is failing. That money should be put into cracking down on the criminal gangs instead and that would help address some of these problems”.
Labour has also attacked the bureaucracy in the asylum system, claiming that 96% of those who arrived in small boats in 2021 are yet to have their asylum claims processed.
Ms Braverman notably absent from the broadcast airwaves in the last week. She is expected to again send a junior minister to the Commons later today to answer Labour’s urgent question. Speaking this morning, on the BBC Radio 4 ‘Today’ programme, Yvette Cooper said, “This her job, she can’t keep sending other ministers into parliament to bat for her”.
Yesterday, the newly appointed immigration minister, Robert Jenrick visited the Manston site with the local MP, Sir Roger Gale.
Speaking on the BBC Radio 4 ‘Today’ programme this morning, Sir Roger said, “There are simply far too many people there and this situation should never have been allowed to develop, and I am not sure that it hasn’t been developed deliberately”.
Sir Roger Gale, who is a critic of the government’s Rwanda policy, has attacked the home office for a policy decision not to book additional hotel space to ease the over-crowding at Manston.
