Asylum Seekers Accommodation and Safeguarding

Clive Efford Excerpts

Monday 7th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

It is important that we recognise what the United Kingdom is actually doing. The vast majority of those who arrive at Manston have literally had their life saved by the UK. The Royal National Lifeboat Institution, Border Force and the Royal Navy have ensured that as many as 95% of those individuals are saved at sea, brought to land, given clothes, food and medical support and then processed at Manston until they can be accommodated elsewhere. We should be clear about how we are meeting our obligations as a country—in fact, we are going far beyond our neighbours. My hon. Friend is right, though, that those standards of decency and humanity must be matched by hard-headed common sense. We should not be accommodating individuals for long periods in expensive hotels.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

In an exchange last week relating to the situation at Manston, the Home Secretary told the House:

“I have never ignored legal advice.”—[Official Report, 31 October 2022; Vol. 721, c. 639.]

Has the Minister been briefed, seen any information in his Department or been told by any colleagues any information that would show that that was not a correct statement to this House?

[Robert Jenrick]

I have no reason to believe that the Home Secretary has misled the House. The Home Secretary was advised that we needed to procure more hotels, and we have procured more hotels—dozens of further hotels, so that thousands of migrants were able to leave Manston over the course of this week alone. That is exactly the right approach.