Home Secretary Suella Braverman, appearing before a committee of MPs asking questions about the government’s handling of the influx of illegal immigrants across the English Channel, has admitted failing to control Britain’s borders.
Lee Anderson, a Conservative MP who sits on the Home Affairs Committee, asked her if the government was putting more asylum seekers in hotels because the Home Office had failed to control the borders and was “not fit for purpose at the moment.”
She replied: “We have failed to control our borders, yes. That’s why the prime minister and myself are absolutely determined to fix this problem.”
Braverman—who replaced Priti Patel in September, resigned, and was then reinstated by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in October—said she did not want to “point the finger of blame” for the overcrowding that occurred at the Manston processing centre in Kent at anyone in particular.
She said, “I’m not going to point the finger of blame at any one person, it’s not as simple as that.”
Braverman then added, “I tell you who’s at fault, it’s very clear who’s at fault, it’s the people who are breaking our rules, coming here illegally, exploiting vulnerable people and trying to reduce the generosity of the British people, that’s who’s at fault.”
She blamed “people smugglers” and said many of those in the boats were economic migrants.
Braverman Says She ‘Was Aware ... of Problem in Manston’
Braverman told the Home Affairs Committee on Wednesday she “was aware from the beginning of my tenure there was a problem in Manston,” but said she would not comment on what she legal advice she received.She said: “It is a government convention that we don’t talk about the issues or the contents of legal advice. But what I will say is that in every decision that I’ve made, both as home secretary and as generally a minister and, I say this as a former attorney general, I have always, whenever I’ve been provided with legal advice by officials I’ve always taken it into account, read it, and listen to it when it’s been delivered to me orally and borne it in mind when decisions have to be made.”
Clandestine Channel threat commander Dan O’Mahoney said: “We know there are judicial reviews on Manston and we are dealing with them, as you expect, in a holistic way. I personally didn’t know there were four.”
The committee’s chair, Dame Diana Johnson, replied, “I’m rather surprised you didn’t think I might ask that question.”
O'Mahoney was then asked about the death this week of a man who had been held at Manston, which he said had not been suspicious.
O’Mahoney said, “The person involved had a significant level of medical support while he was staying at Manston and the circumstances around what happened are not suspicious in any way, so there is no police investigation ongoing.”
The dead man has not been identified as his next of kin have yet to be traced and informed.
O'Mahoney said the man arrived in Kent on Nov. 12, spent a week at Manston, and died in hospital in hospital on Nov. 19.
Earlier O'Mahoney had been questioned by Johnson about why it had been so difficult to move migrants out of Manston.
He said part of the problem had been finding a steady supply of hotels willing to take them and he added: “The provision of hotels .... became very, very difficult ... for a range of reasons. Market supply has become much more difficult compared to last year when hotels didn’t have people staying in them in the way that they do now.”
Johnson, a Labour MP, said she struggled to understand why the Home Office did not foresee the shortage of accommodation amid the migrant crisis, considering the growing number of small boats arriving throughout 2021 and early 2022.
Braverman said: “There is an unprecedented level of pressure on our asylum accommodation system at the moment. We’ve never seen 40,000 people arrive in the UK through dangerous and illegal means, we’ve never had 140,000 people welcomed in good faith, and rightly so, from Ukraine who are to some degree taking up some of our accommodation.”
“We’ve never seen in addition to that, another 80,000 people who we are accommodating, who are waiting for their asylum claims. That all takes up beds and accommodation,” she added.
