Dover and Portsmouth: Protests

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Monday 7th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones]

I agree that we should not give them political legitimacy. Of course, there are well-known connections between violent men and the types of violence they inflict, and it is not always in one area; it can be across lots of different behaviours—sexual violence, domestic abuse and the rest. We have no truck with these awful groups, and the gentleman to whom my hon. Friend refers seems particularly awful. Of course, the police will do what they need to do. They need to disrupt and remove the protesters so that people can go about their business, and in both cases that is what they did. We will ensure that we learn lessons and that arrests are made where they need to be. From the conversations that I have had today with the police about their response, it is clear that they were proportionate and managed to get the result that we wanted, which was the removal of the protesters and enabling people to go about their business.

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke (Wetherby and Easingwold) (Con)]

I am grateful that it is the Policing Minister who is making this statement. I have spoken to North Yorkshire police, and there is a proposal for RAF Linton-on-Ouse to be made into an asylum centre. The trouble is that calling it an “asylum centre on a military site” does not paint what it is. It is just a mass hotel, because people are free to come and go, and they will all be men. The Home Secretary said in a statement that she would not allow an asylum hotel anywhere near a primary school or a nursery, but within 300 metres of the entrance to the base is a primary school and a nursery. North Yorkshire police have made it clear that they would find it exceptionally difficult to constantly police protests, and these protests are coming from far and wide. Given the change to the way that protests are happening, the fact that North Yorkshire police would find it very difficult to police them, and the fact that there is a primary school and a nursery close to what would be a mass hotel for 1,500 people, can the Minister confirm that it is still the policy of the Home Secretary that she will not open such hotels near schools and nurseries?

[Sarah Jones]

I suspect the right hon. Gentleman has already had conversations with immigration Ministers about this particular case, and I suspect he is making the same arguments to them. I would not want to get in the way of that, and I am sure the relevant Minister would be happy to have those conversations. We need to bear down on the overall number of arrivals, which is what we are trying to do. We are not just closing the hotels, but reducing the number of arrivals and reducing the incentives for people to come in, which is why we are introducing the raft of policy interventions that I spoke about earlier.