Suella Braverman: We have failed to control our borders

Home Secretary Suella Braverman has admitted the UK government has failed to control its borders.

She told MPs the blame lay with people smugglers, but said the Home Office needed to improve its efficiency.

MPs also heard the home secretary was warned four times her department was potentially breaking the law by keeping migrants at Kent’s Manston centre.

Previous reports suggested Ms Braverman was told failing to provide alternative accommodation was in breach of the law.

Ms Braverman told the Home Affairs Select Committee she would not comment on leaked documents.

However, she said she was aware from September Manston had a problem.

Manston was designed as a holding site for a maximum of 1,600 migrants who arrive on small boats – each for a maximum of 24 hours – but at its peak there were 4,000 people there.

In October, inspectors found families who had been sleeping on mats in the marquees for weeks.

On Tuesday, the Home Office confirmed the site had been cleared, helped by bad weather in the English Channel causing a sustained fall in the number of crossings.

Dame Diana Johnson, who chairs the committee, said Ms Braverman was told on 15 and 22 September, and 1 and 4 October, that the Home Office did not have the power to detain migrants waiting for onward accommodation.

The committee heard that 36 people who had been held in Manston had been returned to Albania, under the government’s agreement to return migrants and offenders.

This is out of 12,000 Albanians arriving in the UK this year, up from 800 last year and 50 in 2020, according to official figures.

Dan O’Mahoney, the Home Office’s clandestine channel threat commander, also said there was one Albanian police officer working with officials at the Kent camp.

Tory MP Lee Anderson told Ms Braverman more asylum seekers are being housed in hotels because “the Home Office has failed to control our borders and it’s not fit for purpose at the moment”.

Ms Braverman said: “We have failed to control our borders, yes, and that’s why the prime minister and myself are absolutely determined to fix this problem.”

The home secretary is aiming to quadruple the rate at which asylum cases are processed by staff as the government attempts to tackle the backlog in the system.

Ms Braverman told the committee that, on average, each staff member was deciding one asylum case per week at present.

The Home Office has doubled the number of asylum staff to more than 1,000 and plans to recruit another 500 decision-makers by March.

Ms Braverman said: “We want to deliver sustainable changes to reach a minimum of three decisions, per decision maker, per week by May.”

The ambition is four decisions per week, she added.

During the session, Ms Braverman struggled to reply to a question from Conservative Tim Loughton who asked how a 16-year-old orphan from an African country escaping a war zone and religious persecution would be able to join a sibling legally living in the UK.

She said there were “safe and legal routes available” but Mr Loughton said these were only available to a specific group of people such as Afghans fleeing the Taliban and that for some, illegal entry was the only way of getting to the UK.

Ms Braverman was also pushed by MPs on the government’s policy to send some asylum seekers to Rwanda in a bid to reduce the numbers crossing the Channel.

The plan, under which the UK has paid Rwanda £140m, is currently on hold as it faces a legal challenge in the court.

The home secretary insisted she still had confidence in the scheme and believed the courts would rule it to be legal.

Matthew Rycroft, the most senior civil servant in the Home Office, said it did not yet have evidence the scheme would be value for money.