Suella Braverman under pressure to axe ‘untenable’ barges plan after bacteria discovery on Bibby Stockholm

Published

2 years ago

August 12, 2023

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The home secretary is facing fresh pressure to scrap plans to house asylum seekers on barges after Legionella bacteria was discovered in the water supply of the Bibby Stockholm.

The Home Office removed all 39 migrants from the vessel in Dorset on Friday, in the latest embarrassing setback to a policy that has been beset with controversy and delay from the very start.

The removal came less than a week after the first migrants were transferred onto the barge – though legal challenges granted some a last-minute reprieve from having to board.

Care4Calais, which said it stopped 20 migrants from being moved onto the floating accommodation on Monday, said the discovery of bacteria shows their “concerns over the health and safety of the barge are justified” as they called on ministers to axe the policy.

Steve Smith, chief executive of the charity, said: “The Bibby Stockholm is a visual illustration of this government’s hostile environment against refugees, but it has also fast become a symbol for the shambolic incompetence which has broken Britain’s asylum system.

“The government should now realise warehousing refugees in this manner is completely untenable, and should focus on the real job at hand – processing the asylum claims swiftly, so refugees may become contributing members of our communities as they so strongly wish.”

Legionella bacteria, which is commonly found in water, can cause a serious type of lung infection known as Legionnaires’ disease.

None of those on the barge have shown signs of having the disease and are all being provided with a health assessment, the Home Office said.

It was not clear where the migrants would be moved to on Friday night.

Putting them in hotels would likely cause fresh embarrassment for the government, which procured the barge alongside other budget sites in an effort to reduce the £6m-a-day cost of housing asylum seekers in hotels.

The Home Office insisted disembarking those on board was a “precautionary measure” while further tests are carried out – but questions remain about who knew what and when.

Sky News understands routine testing of the water supply was initially carried out on Tuesday 25 July but the results did not come back until Monday 7 August – the same day asylum seekers began to board the Bibby Stockholm, which is docked in Portland Port.

However the Home Office was not made aware of the results until two days later on Wednesday 9 August. Six people boarded the vessel a day later but were later removed on the advice of the UK Health Security Agency, with a decision taken on Friday to remove everyone.

What is Legionnaires’ disease?

Caused by the bacteria legionella – found in the water on the Bibby Stockholm – Legionnaires’ disease is a lung infection that is uncommon but can have serious consequences.

The disease is contracted by breathing in tiny droplets of water containing the bacteria.

It is usually found in places like hotels, offices and hospitals where the bacteria has entered the water supply.

Air conditioning systems, humidifiers and pools or hot tubs are common places where people contract Legionnaires’ disease. People are far less likely to contract the disease by drinking water or in their homes.

The symptoms include a cough, shortness of breath, high temperatures, chest pain and flu-like symptoms.

Labour’s shadow immigration minister Stephen Kinnock said it was “extraordinary” that it appeared proper checks had not taken place before migrants were moved on board.

“It’s absolutely right that the barge has to be evacuated but what a complete and utter shambles. This is a catalogue of catastrophe and government ministers should hang their heads in shame,” he told Sky News.

He said the government would not need to use “barges, hotels or military bases” if they tackled the backlog in the asylum system which has reached more than 173,000 – outstripping the 50,000 units he said were in the UK’s asylum estate.

He called the Bibby Stockholm “a floating symbol of Conservative incompetence”.

Immigration minister Robert Jenrick was understood to be chairing meetings about the situation on Friday.

But one campaign group, No to the Barge, said Mr Jenrick should stand down from his government position with “immediate effect” after promising just days ago the Bibby Stockholm was safe.

On Wednesday, he told Sky News the barge was “perfectly decent accommodation”, despite earlier warnings from the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) that the vessel was a potential “death trap”.

The union reiterated its position in the wake of the latest development as they accused the government of ignoring their concerns.

Assistant general secretary Ben Selby said: “We wrote to Suella Braverman more than a week ago to demand a meeting to discuss these issues. We have had no response to that letter, and our fire safety and operational safety concerns remain.

“It remains our professional view that it’s a potential ‘death trap’ and an accident waiting to happen.

“However, Suella Braverman and her ministerial colleagues are hellbent on confining vulnerable people in jail like conditions on what is effectively a prison ship.”

It comes at the end of the government’s “small boats week” which was supposed to highlight new hardline policies for stopping Channel crossings.

The announcements were somewhat overshadowed by a row involving Tory deputy chairman Lee Anderson saying asylum seekers who don’t like barges should “f*** off back to France” and later admitting the government had “failed” to tackle illegal immigration.

Tory figures were largely silent on Friday night, though one unnamed senior figure was quoted in the i newspaper calling for Ms Braverman to go.

Scott Benton, a former Conservative MP who now sits as an independent, tweeted that the Bibby Stockholm had become a “complete and utter farce” – adding: “As if having porous borders isn’t bad enough, we can’t even move 39 illegal immigrants onto a barge properly.”

Mr Sunak has made “stopping the boats” one of his five key priorities in government.

However, he faced a further blow this week after 775 people were recorded crossing the English Channel on Thursday – the highest daily number so far this year.

It pushed the cumulative total of the number of people who made small boat journeys from France to the UK to more than 100,000 since 2018, when records began.

Politics

All four UK governments ‘failed to appreciate’ scale of COVID pandemic threat – inquiry finds

Published

1 hour ago

November 20, 2025

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All four UK governments 'failed to appreciate' scale of COVID pandemic threat - inquiry finds

All four UK governments failed to appreciate the scale of the threat posed by COVID-19 or the urgency of the response the pandemic required, a damning report published on Thursday has claimed.

Baroness Heather Hallett, the chair of the inquiry, described the response to the pandemic as “too little, too late”.

Tens of thousands of lives could have been saved during the first wave of COVID-19 had a mandatory lockdown been introduced a week earlier, the inquiry also found.

Noting how a “lack of urgency” made a mandatory lockdown “inevitable”, the report references modelling data to claim there could have been 23,000 fewer deaths during the first wave in England had it been introduced a week earlier.

The UK government first introduced advisory restrictions on 16 March 2020, including self-isolation, household quarantine and social distancing.

Had these measures been introduced sooner, the report states, the mandatory lockdown which followed from 23 March might not have been necessary at all.

COVID-19 first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan at the end of 2019, and as it developed into a worldwide pandemic, the UK went in and out of unprecedented lockdown measures for two years starting from March 2020.

Lady Hallett admitted in her summary that politicians in the government and devolved administrations were forced to make decisions where “there was often no right answer or good outcome”.

“Nonetheless,” she said, “I can summarise my findings of the response as ‘too little, too late'”.

Report goes long way to answer inquiry’s critics

This scathing report goes a long way to answer the Covid 19 Inquiry’s critics who have consistently attacked it as a costly waste of time.

They tried to undermine Lady Hallet’s attempt to understand what went wrong and how we might do better as a lame exercise that would achieve very little.

Well, we now know that Boris Johnson’s “toxic and chaotic” government could well have prevented at least 23,000 deaths had they acted sooner and with greater urgency.

The response was “too little, too late”. And that nobody in power truly understood the scale of the emerging threat or the urgency of the response it required.

The grieving families who lost loved ones in the pandemic want answers. They want names. And they want accountability.

But that is beyond the remit of this Inquiry.

The publication of the report into Module 2 will bring them no comfort, it may even cause them more distress but it will bring them closer to understanding why the UK’s response to this unprecedented health crisis was so poor.

And we can easily identify the “advisors and ministers whose alleged rule breaking caused huge distress and undermined public confidence”.

Or who was in charge of the Department of Health and Social Care, as it misled the public by giving the impression that the UK was well prepared for the pandemic when it clearly was not.

‘Toxic culture’ at the heart of UK government

The report said there was “a toxic and chaotic culture” at the heart of the UK government during the pandemic.

The inquiry heard evidence about the “destabilising behaviour of a number of individuals” – including former No 10 adviser Dominic Cummings.

It said that by failing to tackle this chaotic culture – “and, at times, actively encouraging it” – former PM Boris Johnson “reinforced a culture in which the loudest voices prevailed and the views of other colleagues, particularly women, often went ignored, to the detriment of good decision-making”.

‘Misleading assurances’

The inquiry found all four governments in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland failed to understand the urgency of response the pandemic demanded in the early part of 2020.

The report reads: “This was compounded, in part, by misleading assurances from the Department of Health and Social Care and the widely held view that the UK was well prepared for a pandemic.”

The report notes how the UK government took a “high risk” when it significantly eased restrictions in England in July 2020 – “despite scientific advisers’ concerns about the public health risks of doing so”.

Lady Hallett has made 19 key recommendations which, if followed, she believes will better protect the UK in any future pandemic and improve decision-making in a crisis.

Repeated failings ‘inexcusable’

In a statement following the publication of Thursday’s report, Lady Hallett said there was a “serious failure” by all four governments to appreciate the level of “risk and calamity” facing the UK.

She said: “The tempo of the response should have been increased. It was not. February 2020 was a lost month.”

Lady Hallett said the inquiry does not advocate for national lockdowns, which she said should have been avoided if at all possible.

She said: “But to avoid them, governments must take timely and decisive action to control a spreading virus. The four governments of the UK did not.”

Lady Hallett said none of the governments were adequately prepared for the challenges and risks that a lockdown presented, and that many of the same failings were repeated later in 2020, which she said was “inexcusable”.

She added: “Each government had ample warning that the prevalence of the virus was increasing and would continue to do so into the winter months. Yet again, there was a failure to take timely and effective action.”

Politics

Prospective CFTC chair’s nomination advances through committee

Published

2 hours ago

November 20, 2025

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Prospective CFTC chair’s nomination advances through committee

Michael Selig’s nomination to chair the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission is headed for a vote on the Senate floor after clearing a committee hurdle.

In a Thursday notice, Republican leaders with the Senate Agriculture Committee said they had advanced Selig’s nomination following a Wednesday hearing. The vote was reportedly along party lines, with no Democrats supporting Selig as US President Donald Trump’s pick to replace acting Chair Caroline Pham.

Politics, Government, Congress, CFTC — *Source:* *Senate Agriculture Committee Republicans*

The prospective CFTC chair answered questions from senators on Wednesday regarding potential conflicts of interest, his policy positions on DeFi and digital assets and the dearth of leadership at the federal agency. Coinbase chief legal officer Paul Grewal supported his confirmation, citing Selig’s support for a digital asset market structure bill moving through Congress.

Selig was Trump’s second pick to chair the CFTC following the withdrawal of Brian Quintenz’s nomination. Selig will need support from at least 50 senators to be confirmed.

Four commissioner seats are still open

Even if Selig were to be confirmed quickly, Trump has not announced any nominees to fill the two remaining Republican and two Democratic seats at the CFTC. Since September, Pham has served as the agency’s sole Republican commissioner.