The Home Secretary said she knew “the importance of taking legal advice” and had never tried to stop migrants from the Manston immigration processing center being sent to hotels. “At every point, I have worked hard to find accommodation to relieve the pressure on Manston,” he told MPs in the Commons. He also said illegal immigration was “out of control” and spoke of an “invasion of our south coast”, with the sheer numbers arriving across the Channel making it impossible to provide housing for them. Braverman gives statement to Commons – live updates Labor accused the home secretary of keeping quiet about the worsening Channel crisis and overcrowding at the Manston processing center in Kent, where cases of MRSA and diphtheria have been reported. The site is only designed to hold 1,000 people, who are meant to stay for just 48 hours, but there are currently around 4,000 migrants there – more than any prison population in the UK.
More about Migrant Crossings
Hundreds more people were taken to the Manston facility yesterday after a petrol bomb attack at the Border Force migrant center in Dover. Ms Braverman said police were not treating it as a terrorist attack. The Home Secretary is under increasing pressure after a report in The Times claimed she blocked asylum seekers being transferred from Manston to new hotels and ignored legal advice that the government was holding people there illegally. Image: Manston Immigration Processing Center in Thanet, Kent “It’s just not true” But he insisted several times during questions from MPs in the Commons that this was wrong and had indeed approved the use of dozens of new hotels to house migrants since Liz Truss became home secretary in September, before resigning and being reappointed six days later later by Rishi Sunak. “In no way did I prevent the provision of hotels or alternative accommodation to ease the pressure on Manston, that is simply not true,” Ms Braverman said. “More than 30 new hotels have been agreed since September 6, providing an additional 4,500 beds, many of them in Manston. “Since then 4,000 from Manston have moved on, most to hotels.” A Home Office source also said it was “clear she did not ignore any legal advice” about hotels, but two government sources told Sky News they believe the Home Secretary ignored official advice and did not sign off on housing so people could submit in processing. within the expected time frames. Image: View of people believed to be immigrants at the Manston short-term immigration detention facility located at the former Defense Fire Training and Development Center in Thanet, Kent. She also said she was dismayed to discover when she became home secretary that £150 was being spent, on average, per night on each migrant housed in hotels. Some four-star hotels were being used for asylum seekers, he added, saying: “For me, this is not an acceptable use of taxpayers’ money.” Ms Braverman hit out at Labor for claiming that migrants arriving across the Channel are refugees and not economic migrants, she said: “Let’s be clear about what’s really going on here – the British people deserve to know who is serious about stopping the invasion in our southern part. coast and who isn’t. “Let’s stop pretending we’re all refugees in distress, the whole country knows that’s not true.” She said she was “very serious about ending the scourge of illegal immigration” and fixing “our hopelessly lax asylum system”. And she added that she is not willing to release “thousands of people in local communities with nowhere to stay.” Use Chrome browser for more accessible video player 0:44 Video from inside the migrant center Security breach scandal Ms Braverman also faces calls to look into security breaches during her time as home secretary under Liz Truss. New Prime Minister Mr Sunak has been under fire for his decision to appoint Ms Braverman as interior minister since he gave her the post last week, but has stood by her. The home secretary resigned from the same role in Mrs Truss’s government after she sent sensitive policy documents from her personal email to former security secretary Sir John Hayes and another MP assistant, breaching the ministerial code. But she was given her job back just six days later after Mr Sunak became prime minister. She told MPs on Monday that it was “clear that I made a bad judgement… I took responsibility for that and resigned”. The home secretary added that it was “wrong, wrong, wrong” that she ever sent top secret documents from her personal email or any related to cyber security or intelligence services that would compromise national security. In a letter to the home affairs committee released today, Ms Braverman admitted sending official documents from her government email to her personal account on six separate occasions during her first six-week term as home secretary. She said she had apologized to Mr Sunak for the offense she resigned when the prime minister reappointed her as interior minister.
