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Home Secretary Suella Braverman risks reigniting the immigration row with plans to force vulnerable refugee children to undergo X-rays to verify their age. The move comes after Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, told the cabinet he wanted Britain to be a “compassionate, welcoming country”, distancing himself from the home secretary’s controversial claim that the UK was being “invasioned” by applicants asylum. As counter-terrorism police took over the investigation into the bombing of a separate immigration facility in Kent, it emerged that Ms Braverman’s inflammatory remark had not been deleted by No 10. And Mr Sunak’s official spokesman refused to say whether the Prime Minister considered it suitable. Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick said Ms Braverman was trying to express “the enormity of the challenge”, but accepted it was necessary to “choose your words very carefully” and said he had not used the phrase himself. Refugee charity Care4Calais told the Independent that the X-ray proposals raised “serious safeguarding concerns”. The home secretary faced accusations from a senior Tory MP that she misled parliament when she denied that dangerous overcrowding at a migrant processing center was caused by her blocking the use of hotels to accommodate people arriving in the UK by small boat. And another Tory MP said Ms Braverman’s focus on tough measures to prevent Channel crossings would not work and the Home Office should instead focus its efforts on clearing the huge backlog of legitimate asylum claims . David Symonds, who chairs parliament’s all-party group on immigration, told the Independent that the most effective way to undermine the activities of people-smuggling gangs would be to create legal routes for displaced people to come to the UK for to assess their claims. . Hundreds of people were turned away from Manston on Tuesday in a bid to ease overcrowding that has seen some asylum seekers spend weeks in a temporary detention center meant only for rapid initial processing for a period of no more than 48 hours. In a defiant appearance in the Commons on Monday, Ms Braverman denied claims she ignored legal advice to buy more hotel accommodation to allow individuals and families to move from the centre. With the government spending £6.8m a day housing migrants in hotels, he insisted he was right to order a review of how the system works. But a source close to Ms Patel said the former home secretary regularly authorized the use of hotels when capacity at Manston had increased. And Tory MP Sir Roger Gale – whose Thanet North constituency includes Manston – told the Independent: “I am absolutely sure that the Home Secretary has put a moratorium on staying in hotels. This is what has caused this logjam. It was essentially humane and well organized until five weeks ago, then it arrived and hit the buffers. “I am absolutely certain that the Home Secretary misled the House when she said she had not put a stop to paying for extra accommodation. I have been told that there is documentation within the Home Office to prove this.” Sir Roger welcomed the measures to reduce overcrowding but added: “Thousands more need to be moved. He is using it as a refugee camp and I am trying to restore it to its proper purpose as a processing center. There shouldn’t be more than 1,200 people there and they shouldn’t be there for more than 48 hours.” A Home Office source insisted claims that the Home Secretary had misled parliament were “categorically untrue”. On Monday, Ms Braverman pledged that “robust” new checks would be introduced in the new year to resolve disputes over the age of those arriving in the Channel by small boats. The Home Office told the Independent she was referring to proposals, made by her predecessor Priti Patel earlier this year, to use scientific methods to uncover adult migrants posing as children in the hope of allowing them to stay in the UK. A team of experts commissioned by Ms Patel to look at options such as X-rays, CT scans and MRI imaging is understood to be nearing completion of its work. Hannah Marwood, from Care4Calais, said her organization had supported hundreds of children who had been wrongly treated by the government in what is known as an age dispute and the cases had raised serious safeguarding concerns. “The children we’ve worked with have been placed in accommodation with adults they don’t know, which is a terrifying situation for any minor to be in,” he said. “Age disputes have a real impact on the mental health of these young people. They don’t understand why the government questions their age, it causes them a lot of anxiety.” He added: “Government plans for the Home Office to take over the age dispute process and use methods such as X-rays have already been criticized by experts, including evidence that it will produce inaccurate results causing more harm to young refugees. It’s time for the government to drop the rhetoric and adopt a kinder, more compassionate approach to age disputes.” And Mr Simmonds said Ms Braverman’s priority should be to reduce the huge backlog of asylum applications, with almost 110,000 awaiting decisions in March this year – a 300 per cent increase on 2018. “Due to the Home Office’s lack of capacity to deal with these cases, we are seeing an increasing use of hotels, with thousands of asylum seekers in Kent and around Heathrow,” he told the Independent. “Four local authorities have received orders to prevent the Home Office from using hotels in their areas. “The Minister of the Interior and her ministers must solve it and quickly. This is the UK in the 21st century, we shouldn’t be seeing children with their families living in tents and sleeping on the ground in Manston. This is not acceptable on a humanitarian basis. “The capacity of the system is simply not sufficient for the number of people – but these numbers are not particularly high. It’s less than half of the previous peak and France has doubled and Germany has tripled the numbers we’re doing.” Mr Simmonds said his discussions with would-be migrants in Calais made it clear that the “hostile environment” offered by Britain and the threat of removal for processing in Rwanda were “nothing short of a deterrent”. Most wanted to get to the UK because of ties to family or friends there, he said. And others believed that Brexit offered them a chance for a “fresh start” in Britain, which could no longer simply deport migrants to the first safe EU country they entered. The Home Secretary has shone a spotlight in recent days on Albanian men who have arrived in the UK in ever-increasing numbers in recent months. But Mr Simmonds said the focus should be on speedy processing of nationalities such as Iranians, Iraqis and Afghans, whose asylum claims are approved in the vast majority of cases. And he said the only way to reduce dangerous Channel crossings by small boats was to allow asylum seekers to submit their applications abroad and come to the UK for processing. “Until we have a safe and legal route open to people, smugglers will continue to invent it,” he said. A Home Office source said Ms Braverman and her team were “working brilliantly” to reduce the backlog of asylum cases. The home secretary told the cabinet that a “whole of government approach” would be needed to tackle the crisis.
