Asylum Reception Centre: Linton-on-Ouse

Robert Goodwill Excerpts

Tuesday 24th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I very much appreciate this opportunity to debate on the Floor of the House the asylum seeker reception centre at Linton-on-Ouse. I must say that although the Home Office has been willing to engage on this issue, the approach it has taken has been pretty much an abuse of power. It has been indifferent all the way along. The approach has been very insensitive and quite uninformed in terms of the issues that we see on the ground.

I would summarise the proposals as a convenience, in that the availability of a site has taken precedence over its suitability. The site is simply not fit for the purpose outlined for it. A key indicator of that is that until now I have not been able to find—I am sorry to say this; I have hunted through Home Office and Cabinet Office Ministers, Secretaries of State and officials—anybody willing to take ownership of the decision and say that it is the right thing to do. No Member of Parliament or Minister has come up to me to say that they believe that this is the right place to put the facility.

Of course such a facility is always going to be controversial; I quite understand that. As I will touch on in a second, this is not about nimbyism. To put right at the heart of a village of 600 people a facility that will ultimately have a capacity of about 1,500 young single men between 18 and 40, coming from different cultures and different parts of the world—Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Eritrea—is absolutely disgraceful. I have lived all my life about six or seven miles away from the village, and I know many people in it. In North Yorkshire, we are lucky to have a great deal of freedom—that is what we are used to. But the people of Linton-on-Ouse will have those liberties taken from them as a result of this policy.

[Sir Robert Goodwill (Scarborough and Whitby) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that if a developer were to try to build a development of such a size on the edge of such a village, they would be laughed out of court?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I very much appreciate his support and that of many other colleagues; this debate is well attended for an Adjournment debate, which I very much appreciate.

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right: the issue is not race or nimbyism, but scale—the whole facility is way out of scale for this development, as he says. I am talking about the simple liberties that we take for granted: walking to the village shop, sending a child to walk to the village school or playground, walking the dog alone in the morning or evening—all those liberties that have been pretty much taken for granted in Linton-on-Ouse will be taken from its residents. I do not think it is putting it too strongly to say that those residents are the sacrificial lambs to a national policy. That cannot be right and it cannot be something that the Minister will countenance.