Suella Braverman faces criticism as migrant crisis worsens

Home Secretary Suella Braverman is making a statement in the Commons over worsening conditions at a migrant processing centre in Kent.

The facility at Manston is said to be overcrowded, with one senior Tory MP describing it as “wholly unacceptable”.

Some 4,000 migrants are being housed at the centre, despite it being designed to hold just 1,600 when it was built.

Ms Braverman has been accused of failing to sign off on measures which could have eased pressure at Manston.

The Home Office said Ms Braverman “has taken urgent decisions” to alleviate the issues at Manston.

Migrants are supposed to be kept at the Manston centre for 24 hours only – when the chief inspector of immigration visited last week, however, he found some people had been there for over a month.That included one family who had been detained for 32 days, sleeping on mats in a marquee.

Nearly 1,000 migrants crossed the English Channel in boats on Saturday and a further 468 made the crossing on Sunday, according to the government.

So far this year 39,898 people have made the journey from France on small boats, making this a pressing issue for the government to tackle.

Ms Braverman was warned that the government was breaching statutory duties by failing to sign off on ways to move people to hotels or alternative accommodation, the BBC has been told.

One source said there was “crystal clear” advice that the government was not acting within the law.

Ms Braverman was home secretary to Liz Truss for 43 days before she resigned after admitting breaking ministerial rules.

She was reappointed last week by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who said she had accepted she made a mistake.

Sources have said former home secretary Priti Patel had also been “reluctant” to sign off on sending asylum seekers to hotels, but she did so because she was aware it was her statutory duty to do so.

Grant Shapps is also said to have taken action to ease congestion during his brief period as in the same government post.

The Home Office said: “Claims advice were deliberately ignored are completely baseless.”

A government spokesperson said it was right to look at all options available as the number of people arriving in the UK “has reached record levels”.

The Guardian reported on Sunday there were now at least eight cases of diphtheria and a case of MRSA at Manston.

Senior Tory MP Sir Roger Gale said the situation at the processing centre was “wholly unacceptable” and suggested it may have “developed deliberately”.

He said: “I was told that the home office was finding it very difficult to secure hotel accommodation. I now understand this was a policy issue and that a decision was taken not to book additional hotel space.

“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.”

Sir Roger, MP for the Kent constituency of North Thanet since May 2010, said he believed it was a decision taken by a home secretary, but he was not sure if it was Ms Braverman or her predecessor Ms Patel.

Labour’s shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said an overhaul of the whole system was needed and she highlighted a big increase in the backlog of cases. Speaking to the BBC, she called for decision-making to be “much more efficient” and the removal of “extra bureaucratic delays”.

The situation at Manston is still understood to be critical with thousands of asylum seekers, housed in temporary tents hastily erected in the grounds of the former military air base.

Over the weekend, activists recorded children at the centre shouting “freedom, freedom” and “we need your help”.

Following a visit by Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick on Sunday there has been significant effort to secure accommodation for up to 4,000 migrants at Manston, some of whom have been there for more than a month.

Four coaches have been seen going into the base on Monday, but one left early this afternoon with just a handful of asylum seekers aboard.

The intention was that the facility would process migrants in a matter of hours before they were moved on to accommodation elsewhere.

But such is the asylum backlog that 96% of those who arrived by small boats last year have still not had an initial assessment of their claim with more than 127,000 stuck in the system.

Hundreds of people were moved to the Manston site on Sunday after a fire attack at a separate migrant facility in Dover.

Ms Braverman described that situation, in which two people were hurt, as “distressing”. The suspect was later found dead at a nearby petrol station.

The UK is spending almost £7m a day on hotels for asylum seekers – and the cost is likely to rise, MPs heard last week.

The government has said in the year ending June 2022, there were 63,089 asylum applications – 77% more than in 2019.

In a separate development, three people were arrested on Sunday after the National Crime Agency (NCA) and the Belgian Federal Police targeted a suspected organised crime group involved in smuggling migrants into the UK.

Two men, from Basingstoke and aged 34 and 44, were arrested on suspicion of people-smuggling offences as they arrived on the coast near Nieuwpoort.

A third man, 46, was arrested on suspicion of assisting unlawful immigration on the same day by the NCA in Aylesbury.

Twelve migrants – thought to be Albanian nationals – were also detained.