Asylum Seeker Accommodation: RAF Manston

Roger Gale Excerpts

Wednesday 15th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sir Roger Gale (North Thanet) (Con) (Urgent Question)]

To ask the Minister to tell the House of his proposals to accommodate asylum seekers at the former RAF Manston barracks.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Tom Pursglove)]

As the House knows, there has been an unacceptable rise in the number of small boat crossings. It is absolutely right that the Government take all necessary steps in response to what is an ongoing challenge. A new triage facility is being established on part of the Ministry of Defence site at Manston in Kent. It will provide safe and secure accommodation for migrants while the Government carry out the necessary checks. Used alongside existing reception arrangements at the port of Dover, the site will enable the processing of large numbers of arrivals simultaneously. We take the welfare of migrants seriously and will ensure that they receive basic welfare provisions, including hot food, fresh clothing, and, where necessary, medical care.

In the new year, we intend to expand activity at the Manston site to conduct more detailed security and initial asylum screening in parallel before people are dispersed. Arrivals will be expected to remain on-site for a maximum of five days while the security and initial asylum processing checks are undertaken, until they leave to go into further, appropriate accommodation. Our aim is to make our processes more efficient and to reduce pressure on the overall asylum system.

However, this is only one part of a wider process. The Government remain committed to bringing an end to dangerous and unnecessary small boat crossings. We are overhauling our asylum system to ensure that people-smugglers cannot profit from human misery. The tragic deaths in the channel last month underlined in horrific fashion just how dangerous these journeys are. Our new plan for immigration will reform the system and build one that is fair on those who play by the rules and firm on those who do not. It will reduce pull factors by making it more difficult for migrants to remain here where they have no lawful right to do so. The British people want to see change, and the Government are firmly committed to delivering that change.

[Sir Roger Gale]

The former RAF barracks at Manston is about to be released by the Ministry of Defence and is required, once the site has been cleared, by local people for housing. It lies adjacent to Manston airport, which we hope to see reopened in the near future as an airfield once the long-awaited development consent order has been determined. This is not an appropriate site for the proposed purpose.

On Friday 10 December, I received an email from the executive officer of Kent Wing informing me that 2433 Air Training Unit had been given until today, 15 December, to vacate premises at the former RAF barracks and fire training school

“in order that an Immigration Centre could be established there”.

This was described as

“not for us to debate; it is an order to us”.

That was the first that I had heard of this Home Office-instigated proposal. There had been no consultation with me, as the Member of Parliament, with the leader of the county council, with the leader of Thanet District Council, or, I believe, with the county constabulary. I spoke to the Minister of State on that day and was promised a full briefing, with civil servants present.

The leader of Thanet District Council was called by Home Office officials at 5 pm on Monday, two days ago, and the leader of Kent County Council at 6 pm. Again, there was no consultation, and to date, Kent’s senior health officer has not been consulted or even informed officially that the Home Office, which has known of the developing cross-channel people trafficking issue for months, and of the developing crisis for weeks, was proposing to create a screening and processing centre at the unsuitable Manston Road site. Neither were proposals for a phase 2 transfer and triage facility from Tug Haven to Manston discussed; nor was a further proposal for a phase 3 expansion of facilities, to handle the still-to-be-determined number of migrants over an unspecified length of time, consulted on. All we were told by the civil servant leading the project who, as I understand, was working from home and has not visited the site, is that the Home Office is establishing a processing centre—not might be, is establishing—before Christmas.

When I met the Minister of State yesterday, I asked that a stop be put on the project and that proper consultation be facilitated, with a degree of courtesy that from the Home Office has been signally lacking to date. From reports of phone calls made last night, it is clear that officials have ignored that request and are blundering on—hence my request for an urgent question, Mr Speaker. It appears to me that the Home Secretary and Minister of State have been blindsided by officials into yet another knee-jerk reaction to a problem that ought to have been foreseen, and should have been avoided.

As it stands, the current dog-whistle proposal appears to transfer arrivals securely from Tug Haven to Manston barracks, where they will be accommodated, in mid-winter, in marquees, and detained securely while they are being processed. There is no indication as to how the site will accommodate those human beings, how they will be made secure, or what facilities will be made available, other than statutory on-the-site medical services. These are real people who have been subjected to great misery as a result of circumstances that we may discuss on another occasion. As a result of the lack of foresight and preparation, it is now proposed that people should be processed under largely unsuitable conditions, simply to satisfy a perceived demand that can, and should, be met by other means.

I have identified at least one clean, comfortable, and secure operational vessel that can, if commissioned, meet the immediate and longer term need, and I am advised that others are available. I would be grateful if the Minister would now instruct the team to do as I have already requested, put this unacceptable and unworkable proposal on hold, and properly, thoroughly, and swiftly examine the viable alternatives. Perhaps while doing so he could conduct the consultations that ought to have been held weeks ago. Trying to railroad a bad idea through the shelter of the Christmas recess can only have unfortunate and undesirable consequences for the communities and people affected, and for the Government.