MPs raise concerns after finding 56 asylum seekers ‘packed’ into room at intake facility
An MP has written to the home secretary after a committee discovered 56 asylum seekers, including babies and young children, “packed into a small waiting room” at an intake unit.
Chair of the home affairs select committee Yvette Cooper said in a letter to Priti Patel that she was writing to “raise serious concerns about the shocking conditions” found by MPs during a visit to the Kent Intake Unit in Dover.
The facility, where “detained asylum seekers wait for onward placement and screening”, was described as “wholly inappropriate” by the MP.
Yvette Cooper has written to the home secretary
She wrote: “There were 56 people packed into the small waiting room. The space is clearly unfit for holding this many people.
“Most people were sitting or lying on a thin mattress and those covered almost the entirety of the aisle between seats.
“Sharing these cramped conditions were many women with babies and very young children alongside significant numbers of teenage and young adult men”, she added.
The MPs also found that despite 24 hours being the “maximum period of time” a person should be held in the holding room, some had been kept there for “periods of up to 36 and 48 hours”.
Yvette Cooper said the facility was ‘wholly inappropriate’
Concerns about COVID-19 outbreaks have been raised as well, with Yvette Cooper saying in her letter that MPs saw the holding room had “no ventilation, no social distancing and face masks are not worn”.
According to the MP, adult asylum seekers must have a lateral flow test and receive a negative result before entering the intake unit.
“However, it is well known that lateral flow tests are not 100% accurate and will not pick up cases that develop over the subsequent 48 hours,” she said.
The committee also said it “did not observe any COVID-19 mitigation measures” and “could not see how the facility could be COVID safe” given the levels of overcrowding.
The MPs went on to visit the atrium facility as well, “where people wait when they are no longer in detention and awaiting onward travel”.
In the letter, it is described as “essentially an office space with a large central room and several adjoining offices”.
In June this year, Kent County Council stopped accepting unaccompanied child migrants and MPs heard that since then there have been “five stays of over 200 hours (10 days) in this office space and increasing numbers of multiple-day stays.”
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Migrants rescued from dinghy in Channel
Ms Cooper noted that the permanent secretary had confirmed to the committee that an unaccompanied child was one of the individuals held in the facility for over 10 days.
She added: “One girl was sleeping on a sofa in an office, as the only available separate sleeping accommodation.
“For children, this kind of accommodation for days on end is completely inappropriate”.
“It is extremely troubling that a situation has been allowed to arise, and persist, where vulnerable children, families and young people are being held in this manifestly inappropriate office space for days and even weeks.”
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New laws threaten asylum seekers
Over 170 children have been transferred from Kent to another local authority since 14 June 2021.
A government spokesperson said: “The asylum system is being exploited by criminal gangs who facilitate dangerous, unnecessary and illegal small boat crossings.
“Our Nationality and Borders bill will fix this broken system and deter these dangerous and illegal crossings.
“To meet our legal duties temporary accommodation is being used to house asylum-seeking children in safe and secure accommodation before placements can take place through the National Transfer Scheme.
“The Home Office continue to work with all local authorities as well as the Department for Education to ensure needs are met.”
Rishi Sunak will try to convince the public he is the person to “fundamentally change the country” and fix Westminster’s “broken system” – despite the fact his party has been in government for 13 years.
In his speech to the Tory Party conference, the prime minister will present himself as a reformer who is prepared to take difficult decisions, unlike opponents, who take “the easy decision, not the right one”.
Mr Sunak will tell the conference hall that politics “doesn’t work the way it should” and that his Labour opponent, Sir Keir Starmer, is “betting on voters’ apathy.”
The speech will round off what has been a chaotic four days at the party’s annual conference in Manchester – an event that has been overshadowed by the announcement that the northern leg of HS2 will not go ahead as originally envisioned.
Instead, services will run between Birmingham and Manchester but they will not be high speed and they will use the existing West Coast Mainline track.
The development prompted Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham to accuse the government of treating people in the north as “second-class citizens”.
Election would be ‘massive distraction’ – Tory conference latest
He warned the government: “To pull that plug here in Manchester would show complete contempt to the city region and to the north of England as a whole.”
The Tory mayor for the West Midlands, Andy Street, also warned it would be “an incredible political gaffe” allowing opponents to accuse Mr Sunak of having decided to “shaft the north”.
In his speech, Mr Sunak will rail against “30 years of a political system which incentivises the easy decision, not the right one – 30 years of vested interests standing in the way of change”.
He will reflect on his first year in Number 10 and acknowledge a “feeling that Westminster is a broken system”.
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No high speed link north of Birmingham
“It isn’t anger, it is an exhaustion with politics,” he will say.
“In particular, politicians saying things, and then nothing ever changing.
“And you know what? People are right. Politics doesn’t work the way it should.”
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Sunak: ‘No one wants an election’
And he will say: “Politicians spent more time campaigning for change than actually delivering it.
“Our mission is to fundamentally change our country.”
Read more:
Sunak to announce £30bn of transport spending in conference speech
Braverman says Andrew Boff should be allowed back into conference
As well as the HS2 announcement, Mr Sunak has also been undermined by his predecessor Liz Truss, who drew big conference crowds as she demanded immediate tax cuts to “make Britain grow again”.
Mr Sunak has instead compared himself to the late Baroness Thatcher, who tackled inflation before cutting taxes during her premiership between 1979 and 1990.
While Mr Sunak has repeatedly sought to dodge questions over HS2, he did say on Tuesday that the costs of the project had gone “far beyond” what had been predicted, and the sums involved were “enormous”.
The HS2 scheme was given a budget of £55.7bn in 2015 but costs have ballooned, with an estimate of up to £98bn – in 2019 prices – in 2020.
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