Suella Braverman set to visit overcrowded Manston migrant centreon November 3, 2022 at 12:48 pm

Home Secretary Suella Braverman is set to visit the Manston migrant processing centre, as she comes under increasing pressure to get a grip on overcrowding.

The media has not been given access to the visit and Ms Braverman will not be taking questions from reporters.

She has also been visiting a migrant facility in Dover, which was the target of a fire bomb attack on Sunday.

Manston is a former RAF base that was only meant to hold 1,600 people but 3,500 are currently living there.

The government says it hopes to get numbers at the site down to “acceptable” levels in the next seven days.

Minister Graham Stuart said no one in government was “comfortable” with the situation.

But Labour and other opposition parties say the government has lost control of the asylum system and needs to “get a grip”.

Downing Street said the home secretary was meeting Border Force staff and military personnel to discuss operations in the Channel at the Dover site.

No 10 also confirmed she would visit Manston on Thursday afternoon where she would “speak with staff and receive an update on the situation on the ground”.

Defending Ms Braverman’s decision not to talk to reporters during her visit, the prime minister’s spokeswoman stressed that the home secretary “took many questions in the [House of Commons] this week” and added she was “getting on with the job”.

The home secretary has faced criticism for living conditions at Manston, as well as for her use of language, describing migrants crossing the Channel as an “invasion”.

The past year has seen a big increase in the number of Albanians making the journey, and on Wednesday the country’s Prime Minister Edi Rama accused the UK of scapegoating his citizens to excuse its “failed policies” on borders and migration.

He added he had been “disgusted” by Ms Braverman’s choice of words and said the UK once had “a great tradition of integrating the minorities” but was becoming “a madhouse”.

So far in 2022, almost 40,000 people have cross the Channel in small boats – the highest number since figures began to be collected in 2018.

This has been coupled with mounting delays in the time the Home Office is taking to deal with asylum applications, with just 4% of those who arrived via small boats in 2021 receiving a decision.

As a result, the numbers living in Home Office-funded accommodation while they wait for a decision has also grown.

Council leaders in Kent have warned that the county is “at breaking point”.

In a strongly-worded letter to Ms Braverman, they said public services were coming under “extreme pressure from surging local demand”.

No 10 said the government was trying to alleviate pressures, had set aside council grant funding and had developed a fairer dispersal model.

Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick said the numbers at Manston were “falling very rapidly” and that the government was “procuring hotels in all parts of the country” for alternative accommodation.

“We expect we will get to acceptable levels in seven days,” he told ITV.

Mr Jenrick has also confirmed that the Home Office had received “initial contact” for a judicial review – a process that could lead to a judge deciding whether the government has acted lawfully over the Manston centre.

On Tuesday a group of migrants were mistakenly taken from Manston and stranded in central London without accommodation, the BBC has been told.

Danial Abbas, from the Under One Sky homelessness charity, said the men were left “highly distressed, disorientated, lost”.

The Home Office said the group had told officials they had a place to stay and that when it was discovered that was not the case, they had worked “at pace” to find accommodation for them.

Labour’s shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said the situation was “appalling… totally irresponsible and chaotic – what on earth is the home secretary doing?”.

Meanwhile, four chairs of the parliamentary committees for justice, human rights, home affairs and women and equalities have written to Ms Braverman expressing “deep concerns” about the conditions at Manston and asked her to explain how she plans to cut the number of small boats arriving on UK shores and reduce the backlog of asylum cases.