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Suella Braverman ‘refused hotel bookings for migrants in Tory areas’
Reports claim over 4,000 migrants are being held in one site in Kent, including children, despite the official capacity being 1,500
Home Secretary Suella Braverman allegedly refused to sign off hotel bookings for migrants in Conservative-voting areas.
Braverman, who was forced to resign as Home Secretary over a serious security breach just two weeks ago, sent asylum seekers from an overcrowded site in Kent to three hotels because of their location in Labour constituencies, a senior government source has told LBC today.
Former Home Secretary Priti Patel is also accused of having adopted the same approach, and is said to have refused to sign off bookings for the same reason over the summer.
The source told LBC that Patel ‘kept telling officials over the summer she wanted migrants out of hotels, but there is nowhere else for them to go’.
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They added: “She refused to sign off on them and the reason is because they were in Tory voting areas.”
More than 4,000 migrants are currently being held at a former military base in Manston, Kent, including children, despite the official capacity being 1,500.
The Times reported that Braverman was informed of the overcrowding at Manston over three weeks ago, though the government source told LBC that the Home Office ‘will be ignorant and claim they didn’t know this was happening, but of course they are aware, they will have known since the summer’.
They said: “It’s been getting worse and worse. There are more and more arrivals, for which there is no solution.”
It has also been claimed that the government will be forced to ‘pay a premium’ for hotel bookings because of a lack of firms being ‘willing to accept them’.
A Home Office spokesperson has denied the allegations, telling LBC: “The Home Secretary has taken urgent decisions to alleviate issues at Manston and source alternative accommodation. Claims advice was deliberately ignored are completely untrue.
“It is right we look at all available options so decisions can be made based on the latest operational and legal advice.
“The number of people arriving in the UK via small boats has reached record levels, which has put our asylum system under incredible pressure and costs the British taxpayer millions of pounds a day.”