Jenrick confirms military sites being used to house asylum seekers, including in Sunak’s constituency
Jenrick says he is today announcing the first tranche of alternatives to hotel accommodation. He says:
The government will use military sites being disposed of in Essex and Lincolnshire and a separate site in East Sussex. These will be scaled up over the coming months and will collectively provide accommodation to several thousand asylum seekers through repurposed barrack blocks and portacabins.
In addition, [Rishi Sunak] is showing leadership on this issue by bringing forward proposals to provide accommodation at Catterick Garrison barracks in his constituency.
We’re continuing to explore the possibility of accommodating migrants in vessels as they are in Scotland and in the Netherlands.
Jenrick says the use of hotels will not end overnight. But these measures will “relieve pressure on our communities” and will “manage asylum seekers in a more appropriate and cost-effective way”.
Key events
Afternoon summary
Refugee Council disputes Jenrick’s claim government on track to clear backlog of asylum applications this year
In the Commons Robert Jenrick, the immigration minister, claimed the government is “on track to process the backlog of initial asylum decisions by the end of the year”.
But the Refugee Council says the government would have to quadruple the rate at which claims are being processed to achieve this. Enver Solomon, the charity’s CEO, explained:
More than 150,000 people are living in limbo because the government has failed to run an efficient and effective asylum system resulting in billions of pounds being wasted on using hotel accommodation. The majority are refugees escaping bombs and bullets, repression and persecution, without alternative ways to seek safety in the UK.
The government is still failing to make timely decisions with just 11,000 cases being processed in the last three months. To clear it by the end of the year will require a near quadrupling in the number of decisions made each month.
Solomon also said the plans announced today were not “serious, workable solutions”. He said:
They won’t address the challenges of the system the government itself admits is failing due to its own mismanagement. Instead we should be providing accommodation which treats people with humanity, dignity and compassion, not barges and shipping containers.
This is not who we are as a country. We can do so much better than this when it comes to reaching out to support those in need of safety and sanctuary.
Rishi Sunak has promised to clear the backlog of asylum applications by the end of this year, but No 10 has said this promise only covers the backlog of 92,601 claims in place before the Nationality and Borders Act come into force last summer – not the total backlog. Jenrick told MPs today that more than 11,000 cases in the backlog had been dealt with in the last three months. That suggests even hitting the No 10 definition of the target, although the government says it is hiring more staff to process applications.
Here is the Home Office press release with details of the announcement made by Robert Jenrick in the Commons earlier about the plans to move asylum seekers out of hotel accommodation into new places, including former military sites in Lincolnshire and Essex, and a non-military site in East Sussex.
Julian Knight to remain suspended until further complaints resolved, says Tory chief whip
Simon Hart, the government chief whip, has decided that Julian Knight will not have the Conservative whip restored until futher complaints about him are resolved. (See 3.55pm.) That means he will remain suspended from the parliamentary party. A spokesperson for Hart said:
Following further complaints made to the whips office, we will not be restoring the whip to Julian Knight.
These complaints, if appropriate, will be referred to the relevant police force, or appropriate bodies.
The introduction this month of the illegal migration bill, and then the budget, have done little to improve Rishi Sunak’s approval ratings, a poll by Ipsos suggests.
In its summary of the findings, Ipsos says:
The latest update to the Ipsos Political Pulse, taking March 17th-20th following the budget, shows little change in Rishi Sunak’s personal poll ratings and a majority of Britons still holding an unfavourable opinion towards the Conservative party.
Here are the figures for Sunak and Keir Starmer’s approval ratings.
And here are the figures for their parties.
This is from Keiran Pedley at Ipsos, summarising what the poll says.
What do we learn?
– Lots of politics in the past month or so but little impact shown in Sunak ratings.
– Con brand continues to weigh down prospects of a Sunak / comeback bounce.
– Negative public mood persists but less so than the winter.
– Public think Brexit going badly.— Keiran Pedley (@keiranpedley) March 29, 2023
SNP MP John Nicolson cleared of cyberbullying Nadine Dorries
The SNP MP John Nicolson has been cleared of bullying the former cabinet minister Nadine Dorries after a six-month investigation, my colleague Aletha Adu reports.
The plan to house asylum seekers at RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire has been called a “backward step” for the area, PA Media reports.
Between 1,500 and 2,000 migrants will be housed at RAF Scampton and more will be housed at other bases and private facilities across the country, the immigration minister, Robert Jenrick, told MPs.
The confirmation of the plans means that a £300m regeneration project at Scampton, formerly the home of the Red Arrows and the 617 Dambusters Squadron, has been put on hold, despite several calls for migrants to be housed elsewhere so the regeneration project can go ahead.
A spokesperson for Scampton Holdings Ltd (SHL), the company leading the redevelopment, said it was “absolutely devastated” by the government’s decision, with the company’s chair, Peter Hewitt, saying the decision was “incredibly difficult to understand”.
Hewitt said: “Earlier this week Sir Edward Leigh MP met with the prime minister and presented our case, including numerous letters of support from blue-chip businesses, academia, historians and the Local Enterprise Partnership. Despite assurances that these plans will only be temporary, it is nothing short of a backward step for the economic growth of the region.”
West Lindsey District Council had planned to buy the RAF base from the Ministry of Defence and transfer ownership to SHL through a development agreement.
The site would then be redeveloped to create “aviation heritage, business, aerospace, space and aviation technology and education opportunities”, according to the council, with an operational runway at the heart of the plans and thousands of jobs set to be created.
Tory MP Julian Knight criticises Met police for taking four months to accept allegation against him was false
Julian Knight, the Conservative MP, says he has been cleared by the police in relation to a serious allegation that had led to the Tory whip being removed, and to him having temporarily to stand aside from chairing the Commons culture committee.
In a statement criticising the government whips and the Metropolitan police for their response to the allegation, he said:
Had the police taken the simple step at outset of interviewing me under caution, they would have seen that the allegation was false and scandalous. Instead, they waited four months, without ever talking to me, before deciding there was nothing for them to investigate.
I have been left effectively to prove my innocence through my public statements and letters to the commissioner of the Metropolitan police and the chief whip. That cannot be right.
Knight also said that, in naming him in connection with the complaint, “the Conservative whips office acted disgracefully”. He was suspended by the party over the complaint in December.
Simon Jones, a report for BBC South East, points out that the new sites announced by the government today would only be able to house about a tenth of the asylum seekers currently in hotel accommodation.
The three new sites announced by the government to accommodate asylum seekers in East Sussex, Lincolnshire and Essex will be able to accommodate a total of 4,900 people. The current hotel population stands at 51,000 asylum seekers.
— Simon Jones (@SimonJonesNews) March 29, 2023
Scampton and Wethersfield are each due to accommodate about 200 people initially, with capacity gradually increasing to 1,700 at Wethersfield and 2,000 at Scampton.
— Simon Jones (@SimonJonesNews) March 29, 2023
Yousaf appoints new Scottish government cabinet, with women in majority for first time
Humza Yousaf, the new Scottish first minister, has appointed his first cabinet, PA Media reports. PA says:
Deputy first minister Shona Robison, who was appointed to the deputy role yesterday, will also take on the finance portfolio, while Yousaf’s campaign manager in the SNP leadership race, Neil Gray, will be elevated to cabinet secretary for wellbeing, economy, fair work and energy.
Both were praised by Yousaf in his acceptance speech after the announcement of his win on Monday.
Elsewhere, the former net zero secretary Michael Matheson will replace the first minister in the health portfolio, and former transport minister Jenny Gilruth will take over at education.
Mairi Gougeon and Angus Robertson will remain in their respective posts of rural affairs and constitution.
Shirley-Anne Somerville – previously education secretary – has been asked to take over from the deputy first minister in social justice, while the former drugs minister Angela Constance will be elevated to cabinet secretary for justice and home affairs.
Mairi McAllan will become the youngest member of the cabinet, taking on net zero and just transition after being a junior minister in that portfolio under Nicola Sturgeon.
In its news release on the appointments, the Scottish government says this is the first time a majority of cabinet ministers are women. It also says half of the new cabinet ministers are under 40.
Cleverly confirms he opposed former RAF base in his constituency being chosen as site for asylum seekers
James Cleverly, the foreign secretary and MP for Braintree, has issued a statement to confirm that he opposed the decision to house asylum seekers in the former RAF base at Wethersfield, in his constituency. He said:
The Home Office has confirmed that the former MDP Wethersfield will become a temporary asylum reception centre.
Although this decision isn’t the result my constituents and I wanted, I have received assurances that community safety will remain paramount.
I have made my views on the site clear from the beginning. My views, and those of local residents, were taken into account by the Home Office and considerable mitigations for the local community will be put in place.
Originally an RAF base, Wethersfield was later taken over by Ministry of Defence police.
Betty Boothroyd’s funeral, which took place earlier today, reflected how the former Commons speaker was regarded in all walks of life, the rector of Thriplow said. The Rev Angela Melaniphy, who led the service, told the PA news agency that “it was Betty’s service”. She said:
She’d planned it, she’d chosen all the music. The entry music was Climb Ev’ry Mountain sung by Dame Patricia Routledge, who was a very close friend of Baroness Betty Boothroyd’s.
What was lovely about it was that her family was there, her very close friends were there, members of the village were there and members of parliament were there.
And so it was a service that included all of her life and each part of that reflected how highly she was regarded.
Melaniphy told the congregation that to villagers, Lady Boothroyd was “simply Betty”. She told PA:
She was a very popular resident. She was really a member of the village. She drank at the local pub, she shopped at the local shop. She actually was a neighbour, she used to visit housebound neighbours and chat to them.
In later years, she walked down her drive and sat on a bench outside her house and chatted to people who came past.
And, as I said in the service, that in the country she was known to many people as Baroness Boothroyd, in parliament she was madam speaker, but to us she was simply Betty.
Jenrick implies that, if boats were used to house asylum seekers, they would be in port, not offshore
The Conservative MP Jackie Doyle-Price asked Robert Jenrick if any ships or barges used to house asylum seekers would be offshore, or moored in a port. If they were going to be quayside, “what conversations has he had with port operators about the operational challenges to their business for hosting what is essentially a residential community long-term”, she asked.
Jenrick implied that, if boats were used, they would not be offshore because the government does not have the powers to detain asylum seekers for long periods. He told Doyle-Price:
I am not going to comment on press speculation … We don’t, as she knows, currently have the powers to detain individuals for prolonged periods of time, and so any form of accommodation would be non-detained.
During his statement Robert Jenrick confirmed that the government was considering using ‘“vessels” to house asylum seekers, but he said nothing to suggest that the use of a barge, or barges, for this purpose (see 9.22am) was a certainty.
The Conservative MP Richard Drax told Jenrick that the use of boats or barges would be “totally and utterly out of the question”. He explained:
Land-based reception camps in the right place has to be the solution. Does [he] agree with me that if you look at what’s happened in hotels so far with illegal migrants, we’ve had all kinds of issues with local residents, disappearing children, sexual assaults etc.
So would he agree with me that putting these people on boats or on barges where the problem’s going to be exacerbated ten-fold is totally and utterly out of the question.
Jenrick told Drax he did “see merit” in using boats or barges.
The Jenrick statement is now over. I have beefed up some of the earlier posts to include direct quotes, but you may need to refresh the page to get those to appear.
Labour’s Tahir Ali says this is just “headline-grabbing scaremongering”.
Jenrick says this is better than doing nothing, which is what Labour is proposing.
Jonathan Gullis (Con) says people in his constituency are outraged by the use of a hotel in Stoke-on-Trent by asylum seekers. He asks for confirmation that Stoke will be a priority area of young men being moved out of hotel accommodation.
Jenrick says he would like the hotel in Stoke by the station being used for asylum seekers to be closed for this purpose as soon as possible.
Back in the Commons, William Wragg opened his question to Robert Jenrick a few minutes ago by telling him that he was “one of the abler ministers in the Home Office” – which souned like a dig at Wragg’s boss, Suella Braverman.
Wragg then warned the government not to adopt a “Gerald Ratner approach” to this problem – just highlighting the problem. But what would be even worse would be a “something must be seen to be done” approach, he said. He suggested this had led to this “Rosie and Jim idea of barges all over the place”.
Jenrick said he agreed that a performative approach to this would be wrong. People wanted to see the government acting and taking difficult decisions, he said.
Liz Truss criticises Hunt for putting up corporation tax (which he first announced when she was PM)
Turning away from the Jenrick statement for a moment, Liz Truss has hit back at Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, over what he said about her mini-budget in his evidence to the Treasury committee this morning. Hunt said that there were mistakes in the mini-budget, and that it showed “you can’t fund tax cuts through increased borrowing”.
In response, a spokesperson for Truss told journalists:
Liz was always clear that you can’t deliver economic growth and thus reduce borrowing by hiking taxes. Raising corporation tax from 19% to 25% looks like a pretty bad mistake right now when you consider how a firm like AstraZeneca is locating its new plant in Ireland, where corporation tax is half the rate now being levied by the British government. The Treasury looks like it will lose revenue as a result of that decision.
Truss seems to have forgotten that the decision to reverse the corporation tax cut was originally announced by Hunt after she appointed him chancellor, and when she was still prime minister. (Admittedly, by that point she was basically a hostage PM, with Hunt running the country.)
