Western Jet Foil and Manston Asylum Processing Centres

Nick Fletcher Excerpts

Monday 31st October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Suella Braverman]

I confirm that I have not ever ignored legal advice. The Law Officers’ convention, which I still take seriously, means that I will not comment on the contents of legal advice that I may have seen. What I will say is this: I am not prepared to release migrants prematurely into the local community in Kent to no fixed abode. That, to me, is an unacceptable option.

[Nick Fletcher (Don Valley) (Con)]

In the Secretary of State’s statement, she spoke of the successes of the UK-French joint alliance cell stopping 29,000 illegal immigrants from crossing. What are her thoughts on doubling those resources and finally eliminating these dangerous crossings?

[Suella Braverman]

Part of our plan for tackling this issue is about increasing our resources and manpower in order to detect and intercept the organised criminal gangs upstream. That is what part of the work with the French entails, and that is why I have been very encouraged by the discussions I have had with my French counterpart, Minister Darmanin, on how we can work better and more closely together, with our intelligence agencies and law enforcement agencies, jointly upstream to try to intercept early on.