The Manston Crisis Was Avoidable
It has been a disasatrous start for Suella Braverman in her second stint as Home Secretary.
The security breach that led to her resignation only a couple of weeks ago now looks to be much more widespread. According to a letter published by her this afternoon, she used her personal email for official business on six occasions between 15th September and 16th October.
That alone would be bad enough but Braverman is now also facing pressure because of the conditions migrants are facing in Manston, Kent.
Over the weekend a man attacked a migrant processing centre in Dover before killing himself. As a result of the attack, hundreds of migrants were transferred to the facility in Manston but concerns about Manston itself had already been raised because of overcrowding and instances of horrific diseases like MRSA, diptheria and scabies.
It now seems clear that things have got to such a point because of a policy adopted by Priti Patel when she was Home Secretary that was then continued by Braverman. Home Office officials consistently told Patel and Braverman that in order to deal with the growing number of migrants crossing the Chanel, more hotel accommodation would need to be booked. That advice was rejected because those Home Secretaries hoped that poorer conditions would result in asylum applications being processed much more quickly and efficiently.
That hope never came to fruition. The Home Affairs Committee instead noted that the backlog comes from more applications, antiquated IT systems and high staff turnover.
Now a facility that is supposed to hold only 1,800 people for a maximum period of 24 hours is home to 4,000 asylum seekers, many of whom are sleeping on the floor. Some hotels will now be booked but that is expensive and the government is also now facing potential legal challenges from all those affected.
This crisis may have come to a head after the awful attack in Dover but let us be under no mistake, this has been a long time coming because of ongoing failures by the Home Office. The idea that a ‘harsher’ immigration policy would deter migration or somehow speed up applications was always doomed to failure and has instead resulted in a humanitarian crisis that is the sort of thing you might expect in a third world country and puts Britain to shame.
Controlling migration is a legitimate policy goal but the way that consecutive Home Secretaries have acted upon that represents a total failure. The money that will now be spent on hotels or legal claims by those affected could have been better spent on tackling people smugglers, paying staff a fair wage or improving processing systems.
Consequences are now catching up to the actions of Priti Patel and Suella Braverman.
This week on the podcast we look at a family dispute that emerged after a son was cut out of his parents will. For more than 30 years he had acted on the basis that he would inherit the property so the Supreme Court was asked to determine if he had a good claim.
Episode link: https://uklawweekly.com/2022-uksc-27/
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Marcus