The home secretary’s plans to accommodate thousands of migrants in marquees at disused military sites have been criticised as “staggering” and “cruel” by a leading refugee charity.
The tents will start to be erected over the coming weeks as part of emergency plans to deal with an expected surge of Channel crossings over the next few months.
The plan is part of Ms Braverman’s mission to end the reliance on housing asylum seekers in hotels, which is costing the taxpayer around £6m a day.
A source from the Home Office confirmed to Sky News that the tents could be up and running to house migrants within weeks.
But Tim Nao Hilton, the chief executive of Refugee Action, said it was “staggering” that Ms Braverman was proceeding with the plans, after it was reported in the Times that one government source had likened it to using concentration camps.
“The winners from this cruel plan will be the Home Office’s asylum housing contractors, who trouser tens of millions of pounds in taxpayer-subsidised profits as standards continue to plummet,” he said.
“This is yet another way the government has developed to demonise people seeking asylum, which is rooted in its deeply racist approach to refugee protection.
“It really shouldn’t be too much to ask that people who have fled violence, torture and persecution have their claims assessed quickly and justly and are housed in safe homes in our communities.”
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Community volunteer Mohammed Fahim said the migrants were being treated like “second-class citizens” adding: “Let’s treat them as human beings rather than treating them as animals.”
Image: ‘Let’s treat them as a human beings’
However, one asylum seeker who journeyed from Eritrea and was staying in a hotel in the Midlands offered a different perspective.
Speaking to Sky News, Jossy said he would “still have come” to the UK even if the prospect was to be housed in a tent.
He added that his current accommodation was “very nice [since] we compare things from here and our country”.
Image: ‘This accommodation is very nice for us’
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According to The Times, which first reported on the plan for marquees, Border Force is predicting that the next three months will be the busiest time for the small boat journeys in a repeat of last year.
A Home Office source told the newspaper: “It’s obvious we can’t again be in a position where we’re having to spot-book expensive hotels on the fly for migrants.
“There’s nothing wrong with this kind of temporary accommodation when needed. Other countries do use it as well.”
A government spokesperson told Sky News: “We have been clear that the use of hotels to house asylum seekers is unacceptable – there are currently more than 51,000 asylum seekers in hotels costing the UK taxpayer £6m a day.
“We continue to work across government and with local authorities to look at a range of accommodation options.
“Accommodation offered to asylum seekers, on a no choice basis, meets our legal and contractual requirements.”
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2:02
What’s it like onboard the Bibby Stockholm
The Labour Party was also asked whether it would continue to use hotels or whether it would consider using marquees like the Home Office.
Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said the party wanted to “end hotel use” and that “we shouldn’t need to use all of these additional things”.
“We’ve got to get the [asylum] backlog down,” she said. “That’s why we’ve set before these proposals, we’ve set out a five point plan.”
This is not the first time the government has used marquees to house asylum seekers – several were erected at the Manston processing centre last autumn to deal with a surge of arrivals.
The tents are part of a wider strategy to seeking out new accommodation for asylum seekers to reduce the hotel bill to house them.
A hotel set to house up to 241 asylum seekers in Llanelli, Carmarthenshire, was granted a High Court injunction on Thursday to curb protests.
It comes after Carmarthenshire County Council lost its own High Court injunction bid on 7 July to temporarily halt the plans.
On Tuesday, the first asylum seekers are set to move on to the controversial Bibby Stockholm barge, a Whitehall source told Sky News.
An initial 50 single men are set to be moved on board the vessel that is docked in Portland Port in Dorset, with that number expected to rise to 500 in the coming months.
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1:19
Asylum seekers on their experience inside hotels waiting to be processed.
A record backlog and thousands of people making unauthorised crossings of the Channel have strained the system as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak battles to “stop the boats”.
But refugee charities have said the use of such sites is damaging to the needs of vulnerable people, and also raised concerns for migrants’ safety.
Conservative MPs representing areas where the facilities are being established have also been worried about how local services in their constituencies will be impacted, such as police and healthcare.
A month behind schedule after undergoing repairs, the Bibby Stockholm was met by protesters as it arrived in Portland Port on Tuesday last week.
Some residents have raised concerns for their safety on the island with a population of around 13,000 and argued that it does not have the infrastructure to provide for the newcomers and those already there.
A Home Office spokeswoman said: “The Bibby Stockholm has completed a statutory inspection and refurbishment and is now berthing in Portland.
“The welfare of those in our care is of the utmost priority and the barge is now undergoing final preparations to ensure it complies with all appropriate regulations before the arrival of the first asylum seekers in the coming weeks.”
Donald Trump has acted for his country and I will act in Britain’s interests, Sir Keir Starmer has said after the US president imposed 10% tariffs on UK goods.
The prime minister told business chiefs at an early morning meeting in Downing Street: “Last night the president of the United States acted for his country, and that is his mandate.
“Today, I will act in Britain’s interests with mine.”
Mr Trump announced sweeping tariffs on countries around the world, with the UK getting off relatively lightly with 10% tariffs – branded “kind reciprocal” by the president – compared with China, which will have to pay 54% tariffs and 20% for the EU.
A previously announced 25% tariff on British car imports to the US came into effect at 5am on Thursday.
Sir Keir said the government is moving “to the next stage of our plan” after negotiations failed to fend off any tariffs ahead of Wednesday’s announcement.
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He promised any decisions “will be guided only by our national interest, in the interests of our economy, in the interests of businesses around this table, in the interests of putting money in the pockets of working people”.
Image: Sir Keir Starmer hosted business leaders in Downing Street on Thursday morning. Pic: Simon Dawson/No 10 Downing Street
“Clearly, there will be an economic impact from the decisions the US has taken, both here and globally,” he told the business leaders.
“But I want to be crystal clear: we are prepared, indeed one of the great strengths of this nation is our ability to keep a cool head.”
Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds told the Commons on Thursday the government is considering retaliatory measures and requested British businesses let him know what the tariff implications will be for them.
An “indicative list of potential products” that could be targeted was later published, with 8,364 categories covering about 27% of UK imports from the US.
Earlier, Mr Reynolds told Wilfred Frost on Sky News Breakfast his “job is not done” when it comes to negotiating a trade deal
Mr Reynolds refused to say if the tariffs might cause a global recession and said the UK has safeguards in place to ensure it is not flooded with goods that would have gone to other countries.
“We’ll take any powers we need to protect the British people and the British economy from that,” he said.
“What we have directly within our power, alongside that is, of course, the ability to negotiate a better deal in the national interest for the UK. That’s been our approach to date and we’ll continue with that.”
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1:09
Moment Trump unveils tariffs chart
UK will be template for other nations’ deals
The business secretary also suggested if the UK is successful in negotiating a deal with the US “there’ll be a template there” for other countries to “resolve some of these issues”.
He reiterated statements he and the PM have made over the past few days as he said: “America is a friend, America’s our principal ally.
“Our relationship is an incredibly strong economic one, but also a security one, a political one as well.”
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6:39
Sky’s Ed Conway examines how economies across the world are impacted by tariffs
Government ‘very slow’ to start talks
Conservative shadow home secretary Chris Philp told Sky News the government had been “very slow” to start negotiating a free trade agreement with the US, and they should have started when Mr Trump was elected in November, even though he did not get sworn in until the end of January.
He said the UK being hit by a lower tariff than the EU was “one of the benefits of Brexit”.
However, he said the 25% tariff on car exports to the US is “very, very serious” and the global impact is “bad news for our economy”.
Relief in Westminster – but concessions to Trump to come
It has been quite a rollercoaster for the government, where they went from the hope that they could avoid tariffs, that they could get that economic deal, to the realisation that was not going to happen, and then the anticipation of how hard would the UK be hit.
In Westminster tonight, there is actual relief because the UK is going to have a 10% baseline tariff – but that is the least onerous of all the tariffs we saw President Trump announce.
He held up a chart of the worst offenders, and the UK was well at the bottom of that list.
No 10 sources were telling me as President Trump was in the Rose Garden that while no tariffs are good, and it’s not what they want, the fact the UK has tariffs that are lower than others vindicates their approach.
They say it’s important because the difference between a 20% tariff and a 10% tariff is thousands of jobs.
Where to next? No 10 says it will “keep negotiating, keep cool and calm”, and reiterated Sir Keir Starmer’s desire to “negotiate a sustainable trade deal”.
“Of course want to get tariffs lowered. Tomorrow we will continue with that work,” a source added.
Another source said the 10% tariff shows that “the UK is in the friendlies club, as much as that is worth anything”.
Overnight, people will be number-crunching, trying to work out what it means for the UK. There is a 25% tariff on cars which could hit billions in UK exports, in addition to the blanket 10% tariff.
But despite this being lower than many other countries, GDP will take a hit, with forecasts being downgraded probably as we speak.
I think the government’s approach will be to not retaliate and try to speed up that economic deal in the hope that they can lower the tariffs even further.
There will be concessions. For example, the UK could lower the Digital Services Tax, which is imposed on the UK profits of tech giants. Will they loosen regulation on social media companies or agricultural products?
But for now, there is relief the UK has not been hit as hard as many others.
More than 400 pages of thousands of goods that could be affected by reciprocal tariffs against the US.
Everything from fresh domestic ducks to sea-going dredgers makes the cut; most symbolic, however, are iconic American items like jeans, motorcycles and whiskey.
Would Donald Trump stand for a levy on Levi’s? It’s not the first time this battle has played out.
At the time, the UK, then an EU member, followed suit.
But as the UK tries to carve its own path outside the bloc, vindicated by the baseline 10% tariffs imposed instead of the EU’s rate of 20%, the aim is to avoid retaliation.
The government want us to know “all options are on the table” – but that is not how they want this to play out.
“This is not a short-term tactical exercise,” the prime minister said this morning.
Despite the business secretary’s best efforts during his recent trip to Washington to try to secure a UK tariffs carveout, no deal was reached in time.
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3:54
How will tariffs hit working people?
Mr Trump wanted his big bang, board brandishing moment; carveouts for certain countries would have softened the impact of his speech.
But with 90-plus countries on the tariff billboard, how far along the queue is any UK deal?
And how much are we willing to give? Will the sensitive subject of chlorinated chicken be on the table? What of the agreement to cut taxes on big tech companies that Mr Trump wants?
Lots of questions. The day after the surreal night before is too soon to know all the answers, but this is about politics as much as it is about economics.
As the prime minister launched Labour’s local election campaign in Derbyshire today, he talked about potholes, high streets and school meals. Every question I heard was about tariffs.
Decisions made across the Atlantic are looming large. Tariffs may not directly sway many votes in the local elections, but the consequences for Rachel Reeves’s fiscal headroom and the amount of money she has to spend, or save, will have an impact before too long.
There is a certain steel about a mother who has lost a child.
It’s hard to put your finger on, but perhaps after going through hell you re-emerge made of a different material to the rest of us.
Figen Murray has been utterly relentless after her son Martyn Hett was killed in the Manchester Arena terror attack at an Ariana Grande concert in May 2017.
When she worried that politicians’ support was wavering last year, she walked 200 miles from the place Martyn died to Downing Street – and needed a hip replacement after.
And on Thursday, Martyn’s Law – rules to better train staff and safeguard venues against terrorists – was passed by royal assent, finally becoming law.
I sat down with Figen just before she went into Number 10 Downing Street to meet the prime minister, and she told me after six years of campaigning, the moment “feels surreal”.
She continued: “The Manchester attack was a wake up call. But it also made question, who are these people who do these things? Why are they doing it? What are governments doing about it? And I realised the only way I could get the answers was to educate myself – so I did a masters in counter-terrorism.
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“I’ve recognised that people were radicalised. When you were a newborn baby, you were innocent but somebody poisoned your mind.
“There are people who try to groom young people into their ideology, and I want them to recognise where these people operate, the tricks they use, the things they say and how they can recognise themselves or others in the process of being radicalised and how to get out.”
Image: Martyn Hett
She also supports the initiative to show the Netflix drama Adolescence in schools: “I think it’s absolutely important that young people see that programme and they learn more about it. It’s a good thing and I’m hoping they’re taking it further.”
There will be a debate – certainly – about the financial impact the legislation will have on venues, but the legislation has been welcomed by safety campaigners.
Emma Kay, co-founder of personal safety app WalkSafe which geo-fences events and stadiums, said: “The passing of Martyn’s Law is hugely progressive move that will keep young people safe on nights out.
“Our research has shown that 63% of women prefer to visit venues with safety initiatives in place. People want safer experiences and to know their friends and loved ones arrive home safely.”
When I sat down with Figen, I asked her how Martyn would feel today.
“Knowing Martyn, the party animal he was, he’d throw the biggest party ever,” she said.
“He was full of life and lived life not just at 100 miles an hour, but 200 miles an hour.
“You would definitely know when he came through the door, and he had an incredible ability to make everyone feel that they are the most important person in that moment in his life. And I really miss that.”
You can watch Sophy Ridge’s full interview with Figen Murray on the Politics Hub at 1900 on Sky News.