Cross-Channel Migrants: Manston Facility

The Prison Officers Association’s Andy Baxter has described this as:

“A humanitarian crisis on British soil”.

As we have heard, the independent chief inspector of borders and immigration, David Neal, told MPs that he was left “speechless” by what he saw and advised that we are now past the point where we can describe Manston as being a safe facility. This Home Secretary had better start to listen and the Minister needs to listen, rather than reading out briefings that announce the provision of toilet facilities. He needs to understand what people actually need. How on earth have we ended up with people sleeping on cardboard, in tents, and with outbreaks of diphtheria and norovirus? We are constantly debating these conditions here. Why do we keep coming back to this? How many times are we going to be standing here repeating the question: where was the forward thinking? The Home Office is not coping, but instead of spending that £120 million on her “dream” flight to Rwanda had the Home Secretary spent it on caseworkers, perhaps we would not have these disgraceful logjams.

Finally, Manston is supposed to be a short-term holding facility; people are not supposed to be there for more than 48 hours. Surely that means that people are now being detained illegally in these conditions, so will he tell us: how many people have been detained for more than 48 hours? how many claims for unlawful detention is he expecting and at what cost?