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According to Danny Shaw, the BBC’s former home affairs correspondent, sources briefing on behalf of Priti Patel, the former home secretary, say she is not to blame for the overcrowding at Manston.
NEW A source close to @pritipatel says “there was never any overcrowding at Manston” when she was Home Secretary.
“She did all she could to keep the system moving and keep to our statutory duties,” says the source.
If correct, that puts the spotlight back on @SuellaBraverman
— Danny Shaw (@DannyShawNews) October 31, 2022
In his Today interview this morning the Tory MP Sir Roger Gale said that he thought the Home Office may have deliberately allowed the Manston centre to become overcrowded, although he said he was not sure whether the key decisions were taken by Patel or by Suella Braveman. (See 9.24am.)
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.
In an interview on the Today programme Gale said that Manston was “overwhelmed” and that conditions there were “wholly unacceptable”. He said the catering and the medical facilties at the site were good, but that it was just far too overcrowded. He told the programme:
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.
Asked what he meant by that, he went on:
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.
Gale said he thought the decision not to find more hotel accommodation for the people in Manson was taken by the home secretary, although he said he was not sure whether it was Suella Braverman, the current one, or Priti Patel, her main predecessor. (Grant Shapps was also in office very briefly.) Asked what the motive might be for a policy decision like this, Gale said he did not “want to go there”. But when Nick Robinson asked what he would think if ministers had allowed conditions to deteriorate to deter potential asylum seekers, Gale said he would find that wholly unacceptable”. He also said he thought the government’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda was unacceptable.
There have been several reports saying Braverman did take decisons that allowed conditions at Manston to deteriorate. In the Times on Saturday Matt Dathan reported that “decisions made by Suella Braverman led directly to overcrowding and outbreaks of scabies and diphtheria at a migrant processing centre in Kent”. He wrote:
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.
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In the Sunday Times Harry Yorke and Tim Shipman amplified the story, saying that Braverman’s decision could lead to the government losing a costly legal case. Yorke and Shipman wrote:
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.
A government source said: “The government is likely to be JR’d [judicially reviewed] and it’s likely that all of them would be granted asylum, so it’s going to achieve the exact opposite of what she wants. These people could also launch a class action against us and cost the taxpayer millions.”
In response, the Home Office says that Braverman “has taken urgent decisions to alleviate issues at Manston and source alternative accommodation” and that she was right to consider “all available options”.
Gale, and the Labour party, want Braverman to answer questions about this in the Commons this afternoon. It is possible that the Speaker may grant an urgent question (UQs), or that the Home Office will offer a statement. But MPs are less likely to hear from Braverman herself. She has not been keen on defending her record himself – she is still facing questions about the leak scandal too – and she avoided the Commons on Wednesday and on Thursday last week, when UQs addressed to her were granted. Jeremy Quin, a Cabinet Office minister, answered the one about her resignation instead, and Robert Jenrick, the immigration minister, picked up the one about Manston.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.30am: The Office for National Statistics publishes new data on the impact of Covid on the economy.
10am: The Covid inquiry holds a preliminary hearing (involving lawyers, not witnesses) about the procedure for module 2 of the inquiry, which will cover government decision making in relation to the pandemic.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
2.30pm: Mel Stride, the new work and pensions secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
I try to monitor the comments below the line (BTL) but it is impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer questions, and if they are of general interest, I will post the question and reply above the line (ATL), although I can’t promise to do this for everyone.
If you want to attract my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter. I’m on @AndrewSparrow.
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