Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 3:36 pm on 7 November 2022.
It is important that we recognise what the United Kingdom is actually doing. The vast majority of those who arrive at Manston have literally had their life saved by the UK. The Royal National Lifeboat Institution, Border Force and the Royal Navy have ensured that as many as 95% of those individuals are saved at sea, brought to land, given clothes, food and medical support and then processed at Manston until they can be accommodated elsewhere. We should be clear about how we are meeting our obligations as a country—in fact, we are going far beyond our neighbours. My hon. Friend is right, though, that those standards of decency and humanity must be matched by hard-headed common sense. We should not be accommodating individuals for long periods in expensive hotels.