Western Jet Foil and Manston Asylum Processing Centres

Karen Buck Excerpts

Monday 31st October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Suella Braverman]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising the point. Let me say two things. First, the Prime Minister is absolutely committed to fixing this problem. I have no doubt whatever about his determination to fix it once and for all. I have huge confidence in him and am grateful for his support operationally on this.

With modern slavery laws, it is not just about people coming here on the boats and claiming modern slavery, which effectively buys them a year because it takes 400 days on average for a modern slavery claim to be processed, so they know that they will be accommodated in the UK free of charge. It is even worse than that: there are serious foreign national offenders in this country who have served sentences of several years for sex offences, drug offences or other serious offences. When they finish their sentence and the UK authorities want to deport them, what do they do? They claim to be a victim of modern slavery.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

It is absolutely essential that the pressures on the Manston centre be relieved as soon as possible. It is also essential that we do not simply replicate its conditions in concentrations of hotels. I have a ward in which so many hotels are being commissioned, including two more this weekend, that the ratio is 800% above Home Office guidelines. The local authority is getting virtually no support to manage it, and no capacity at all is being provided to the health service for the very real health issues that need to be dealt with. Will the Home Secretary ensure that Home Office officials meet me immediately to discuss how we can ensure that, when asylum seekers come into these hotels, they are properly managed and dispersed?

[Suella Braverman]

I would be very glad for my right hon. Friend the Minister for Immigration to meet the hon. Lady to discuss the issue in detail. My review is looking into the process of identification of hotels around the country. We are seeing a real geographical imbalance in where they are located: there is real pressure in certain places, while other places are not taking people. We need to bring some equivalence to the process, and ultimately we need to bring it to an end. We need to make it more cost-effective, but ultimately we need to be processing people more quickly.