Western Jet Foil and Manston Asylum Processing Centres

Jane Hunt Excerpts

Monday 31st October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Suella Braverman]

We are currently accommodating unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in hotels with a maximum occupancy of 353, and additional available accommodation is coming on stream. I would say to the hon. Lady that it is a fallacy to suggest that we are somehow cutting corners. When I arrived at the Home Office, I was frankly dismayed and appalled to find that we are spending, on average, £150 per person per night—by my standard, that is quite a nice hotel—to accommodate people in hotels. On my review and closer scrutiny of how that decision making was taking place, I identified several four-star hotels around the country that were being procured for the purpose. That, for me, is not an acceptable use of taxpayers’ money.

[Jane Hunt (Loughborough) (Con)]

Unsolicited economic migration to the UK via illegal trafficking must be stopped. We must use our limited resources to support valid asylum cases that have not come from a safe country. What steps is the Home Office taking to return illegal immigrants now to their home countries in cases of countries who will accept them?

[Suella Braverman]

We take removals seriously. Actually, part of the plan to solve the problem is about trying to accelerate the turnaround and processing of people arriving illegally. We have recently had some success in removing people back to Albania within quite a short period of time, but we need to go further and faster.