Home secretary faces continued pressure over overcrowding at facility
Charlie Taylor, HM chief inspector of prisons, has said the Home Office needs to “get a grip” on the situation at the Manston migrant processing centre, where he said “things are going wrong”.
Taylor told Sky News:
What’s happening at Manston when I visited was people were sleeping on the floors, on the rubber mats down on the floors and then very thin blankets or mattresses. Lots and lots of people in a room, all squished in together, very uncomfortable.
The room for families has lots and lots of different families all sharing the same room, very young children, older children. For a few hours, that would be acceptable, but where people are spending long periods of time there, it just isn’t.
I would be horrified if I went into a prison where prisoners didn’t have mattresses, where prisoners didn’t have flushing lavatories, where prisoners didn’t have telephones that they can stay in touch with family and friends.
Those are three things that we see at Manston – similarly if they couldn’t get out into the fresh air.
As I said before, the Home Office needs to get a grip.
It’s extremely concerning that children are being asked to sleep on the floor in accommodation that’s wholly unsuitable.
Bear in mind that some of these people have had incredibly long journeys. Some of them are potentially victims of torture, victims of all sorts of abuse and also potentially victims of trafficking as well.
The idea that we then expect them to sleep on the floor for long periods of time just is not acceptable.
It’s a real worry. We were there earlier in the year where things were not so bad.
So we haven’t been back to inspect recently, we will go back and see but what we’re hearing from a number of very credible sources – Sir Roger Gale, from Dave Neal from the inspector of the borders, from trade unions who are working there – that things are going wrong at Manston.
We need to raise more money from a windfall tax on oil and gas companies and actively encourage them to invest in renewables.
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