Suella Braverman vows to improve overcrowded Manston site

Suella Braverman has promised to improve conditions at the Manston migrant processing centre, following a visit earlier.

The home secretary has been coming under pressure to get a grip on overcrowding at the site in Kent.

The Home Office said medical and catering facilities would be upgraded, and bedding would be improved.

The media was not given access to the visit, and Ms Braverman did not take questions from reporters.

Manston is a former RAF base that was only meant to hold 1,600 people but earlier this week it housed 4,000.

No 10 says that number has now fallen to 2,700 and Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick has said he hoped to get numbers at the site down to "acceptable" levels in the next seven days.

It has been confirmed that the Home Office is facing a potential court battle over safety at Manston, after details of the first legal case were released by lawyers.

Ms Braverman arrived at the Manston facility in a Chinook RAF helicopter, after earlier visiting a nearby migrant facility in Dover that was the target of a fire bomb attack on Sunday.

Downing Street later said the home secretary had been travelling in a helicopter to oversee operations in the English Channel prior to her Manston visit.

Labour and other opposition parties say the government has lost control of the asylum system. Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said ministers needed to "get a grip" of the situation.

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said the system wasn't "working" but insisted it was the government's "number one priority to get the situation under control".

Defending Ms Braverman's decision not to talk to reporters during her visit, Mr Hunt said she had done "a number of public appearances" in Parliament and had been "prepared to face the music".

The home secretary has faced criticism for living conditions at Manston, as well as for her use of language, describing migrants crossing the Channel as an "invasion".

The past year has seen a big increase in the number of Albanians making the journey, and on Wednesday the country's Prime Minister Edi Rama accused the UK of scapegoating his citizens to excuse its "failed policies" on borders and migration.

He added he had been "disgusted" by Ms Braverman's choice of words, and said the UK once had "a great tradition of integrating the minorities" but was becoming "a madhouse".

So far in 2022, almost 40,000 people have cross the Channel in small boats - the highest number since figures began to be collected in 2018.

This has been coupled with mounting delays in the time the Home Office is taking to deal with asylum applications, with just 4% of those who arrived via small boats in 2021 receiving a decision.

As a result, the numbers living in Home Office-funded accommodation while they wait for a decision has also grown.

Council leaders in Kent have warned that the county is "at breaking point".

In a strongly-worded letter to Ms Braverman, they said public services were coming under "extreme pressure from surging local demand".

No 10 said the government was trying to alleviate pressures, had set aside council grant funding and had developed a fairer dispersal model.

Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick said the numbers at Manston were "falling very rapidly" and that the government was "procuring hotels in all parts of the country" for alternative accommodation.

"We expect we will get to acceptable levels in seven days," he told ITV.

On Tuesday a group of migrants were mistakenly taken from Manston and stranded in central London without accommodation, the BBC has been told.

Danial Abbas, from the Under One Sky homelessness charity, said the men were left "highly distressed, disorientated, lost".

The Home Office said the group had told officials they had a place to stay and that when it was discovered that was not the case, they had worked "at pace" to find accommodation for them.

Labour's shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said the situation was "appalling... totally irresponsible and chaotic - what on earth is the home secretary doing?".

Meanwhile, four chairs of the parliamentary committees for justice, human rights, home affairs and women and equalities have written to Ms Braverman expressing "deep concerns" about the conditions at Manston and asked her to explain how she plans to cut the number of small boats arriving on UK shores and reduce the backlog of asylum cases.