During his brief tenure as home secretary last month, Grant Shapps stated that the asylum processing camp at Manston was “edging towards becoming an unofficial prison center.”
He told that he had “quite clear” guidance when he succeeded Suella Braverman following her resignation.
Mr. Shapps stated that there were worries that people were “inadvertently detained,” which would be illegal.
The government has been criticized for Manston’s excessive congestion.
Ms. Braverman, who was reappointed as home secretary by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, denied following legal advice or preventing the use of hotels to alleviate congestion at the Kent site.
At one time at the end of last month, it was estimated that there were approximately 4,000 migrants at Manston, even though the facility was built to temporarily house only 1,600 individuals.
Mr. Shapps’s remarks “may open a new bag of worms” for Ms. Braverman, since they “implicitly allege” that she did not do everything she could have to relocate people to alternative housing and ensure the government complied with the law.
Mr. Shapps, who is currently the business secretary, acted as home secretary for six days following Ms. Braverman’s resignation over data breaches during the final days of Liz Truss’s premiership.
During his time at the Home Office, he told, “I witnessed a situation in which a center that was intended to be a processing site… became an unofficial detention center.”
He stated that he was concerned about the government’s compliance with the law and that he made modifications to the site’s operations “to guarantee that it wasn’t a detention center,” while also removing individuals.
He added, “These are immediate judgments that I took, and the home secretary has proceeded to make the same modifications to ensure that these numbers are reduced.”
As a result of legal action alleging systematic and lengthy wrongful detention at the facility, the government could face a judicial struggle over the safety of women and children detained at Manston.
The former RAF installation was designed as a temporary holding area with no overnight accommodations, thus officials cannot generally hold anyone there for more than 24 hours.
The administration has attributed the strain on the asylum system to the enormous number of individuals crossing the English Channel in small boats.
This year, about 40,000 people have attempted the perilous voyage, the greatest number since data collection began in 2018.
Mr. Sunak and French President Emmanuel Macron will discuss the problem when they meet tomorrow at the COP27 climate summit in Egypt.
“The more we can engage with our colleagues in France to prevent individuals from leaving their shores in the first place, the better,” Mr. Shapps said, adding that a reduction in the number of people crossing the Channel would “relieve pressures” in the United Kingdom.
Sir Keir Starmer, leader of the Labour Party, stated that the United Kingdom must engage “upstream” with France to prevent the illegal crossing of the English Channel.
“This is the discussion I would have, and I hope our prime minister will have as well,” he told broadcasters.
