Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 3:36 pm on 7 November 2022.
I welcome the Minister to his place. The Home Secretary has stated that after 12 years of Conservative government the asylum system is “broken”. We agree, and it is the Conservative party that has broken it. The Government are processing just half the number of asylum claims that they were processing in 2015, and as a result the British taxpayer is footing a £7 million hotel bill every single day. Their failure to replace the Dublin agreement on returning failed asylum seekers, their failure to crack down on the criminal gangs, and their failure to get agreement with France have also increased the backlog.
This catalogue of chaos has led to the overcrowding in Manston, for which Sir Roger Gale has directly blamed the Home Secretary. The previous Home Secretary revealed today that on
“being used, or in danger of being used, as a detention centre”,
and he took emergency measures to work within the law. However, the current Home Secretary met officials on
We know that 222 children have gone missing from asylum accommodation. What are the Government doing to find those missing children, to prevent more children from going missing, and to meet their legal obligations to vulnerable children?