Roger Gale says conditions at Manston processing centre in his constituency are ‘wholly unacceptable’
Good morning. Has the Home Office deliberately allowed conditions at Manston, the processing centre in Kent for people who cross the Channel on small boats, to deter to the extent that it is described as something of a hell hole? And is this related to the fact that Suella Braverman, the home secretary, is an avid enthusiast for policies that might deter people from seeking asylum in the UK in the first place?
This is a common view on the left, but this morning it was also floated by the Conservative MP Sir Roger Gale, whose North Thanet constituency covers Manston. Manston is meant to take a maximum of 1,600 people, who are supposed to stay for just 24 hours, but recently there have been 3,000 people there, some staying for as long as a month. And yesterday another 700 people were being taken there, following the petrol bomb attack on an immigration centre in Dover. My colleague Diane Taylor has a good article on conditions at Manston here.
There are simply far too many people there and this situation should never have been allowed to develop. And I’m not sure that it hasn’t almost been developed deliberately.
I was told that the Home Office was finding it very difficult to secure hotel accommodation. I now understand that this was a policy issue and a decision was taken not to book additional hotel space. Now that’s like driving a car down a motorway, seeing them motorway clear ahead, an then there’s a car cras, and then suddenly there’s a five-mile tailback. The car crash was the decision not to book more hotel space.
Multiple government sources who work on asylum accommodation said she had blocked the transfer of thousands of migrants detained at a processing centre at Manston airport to hotels during her first, six-week spell as home secretary.
Home Office officials warned her that she risked breaking the law by detaining people — including an Afghan family — for periods of up to 32 days at the centre.
According to five sources, Braverman, 42, was also told that the legal breach needed to be resolved urgently by rehousing the asylum seekers in alternative accommodation.
Two sources said she was also warned by officials that the Home Office had no chance of defending a legal challenge and the matter could also result in a public inquiry if exposed.
