Asylum Seekers Accommodation and Safeguarding

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Monday 7th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

My hon. Friend has spoken on this on a number of occasions, and she draws on her own experience at the Home Office and elsewhere. She is right that modern slavery laws, while important and well meant, are now being abused, particularly by males who are here for economic migration purposes. We have seen many cases in which young males from countries such as Albania, as she says, have their asylum claims processed. Those claims are rejected, quite rightly, so then they immediately make a claim under modern slavery laws. That is wrong, and we intend to review it, as she says, and make any changes that we need to make.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

What the Minister said to my hon. Friend the Chair of the Select Committee on Home Affairs, and what the Home Secretary told the House last week balanced breaking the law by leaving asylum seekers in Manston for weeks against breaking the law by abandoning them on the streets without means, and then—Victoria station aside—they decided to commit the first piece of law breaking. Will the Minister publish the advice that led him to that unusual legal opinion?

[Robert Jenrick]

It is not the convention for the Government to publish legal advice, but I have made it clear today and in other public appearances that it is absolutely essential that Manston, like other sites, operates within the law. In this case, that means ensuring that individuals are treated decently and humanely there and stay for 24 hours unless there are exceptional reasons to the contrary. In this case, it was right that the Home Secretary balanced that among wider concerns to leave individuals destitute. It was also the case that this is a site that took at short notice large numbers of migrants who crossed the channel illegally, which put huge pressure on our facilities there. We also had to deal with the aftermath of what is now being treated as a terrorist incident, which led to 700 individuals being evacuated to the site. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that we have made huge progress over the course of the week. We are now at the right level of capacity and we are working to ensure that individuals do not stay there any longer than 24 hours.