Asylum Seekers Accommodation and Safeguarding

Lee Anderson Excerpts

Monday 7th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I am grateful to the right hon. Lady, who chairs the Select Committee, for that question. The law is clear that we should not detain individuals at sites such as Manston for longer than 24 hours, and that is exactly the position that we want to return to as fast as we can.

There are competing legal duties on Ministers. Another legal duty that we need to pay heed to is our duty not to leave individuals destitute. It would be wrong for the Home Office to allow individuals who had only recently arrived in the United Kingdom—the vast majority of those at Manston had been saved at sea by Border Force, the Royal National Lifeboat Institute and the Royal Navy—and who had been brought to the site in a condition of some destitution, to be released on to the rural lanes of Kent without great care. That is why the Home Secretary has balanced her duties and taken the required steps to procure more hotel accommodation as swiftly as we can. The right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) can see the work that we have already done.

In answer to the first part of the right hon. Lady’s question, the conditions at Manston were poor because there were too many people there, but a wide range of facilities are provided: individuals are clothed, they are fed three times a day, and there is an excellent medical facility. I have seen those things with my own eyes, and I hope that she sees them as well. We need to keep a sense of proportion about the state of Manston.

[Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Con)]

Now then. When I hear talk of sourcing housing and getting extra hotel spaces for illegal immigrants, it leaves a bitter taste in my throat. Five thousand people in Ashfield want to secure council housing but cannot get it, yet we are debating this nonsense once again. When are we going to stop blaming the French, the European convention on human rights and the lefty lawyers? The blame lies in this place right now. When are we going to grow a backbone and do the right thing by sending them straight back the same day?

[Robert Jenrick]

My hon. Friend is right that in sourcing accommodation for migrants, we should be guided both by our common desire for decency, because those are our values, and by hard-headed common sense. It is not right that migrants are put up in three or four-star hotels at exorbitant cost to the United Kingdom taxpayer, or that migrants who come here illegally are given preference of any sort over British citizens. That is the kind of approach that we will take going forward.

We will now work closely with our allies in France to ensure that more crossings are stopped in northern France. The Prime Minister will speak with President Macron this week while they are in Egypt, and we hope to take forward that partnership productively and constructively in the months ahead.