Asylum Seekers Accommodation and Safeguarding

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 3:36 pm on 7 November 2022.

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Photo of Robert Jenrick Robert Jenrick The Minister for Immigration 3:36, 7 November 2022

The Government’s objective is to ensure that nobody stays at Manston for more than 24 hours, but we have to balance up competing legal duties. We also have to be cognisant of the fact that not everything is within our control when we deal with this situation. It was clearly not within the control of the Home Office that thousands of individuals chose to get into small boats and cross the channel in a very short series of days, and it was certainly not within our control that an individual chose to attack the Western Jet Foil on Saturday, ensuring that 700 to 800 people were brought swiftly to the Manston site as a result. These are the difficult choices that we have to balance. There are no simple choices or solutions in the Home Office, but we have to act in the public interest.