Robert Jenrick (4) Suella Braverman (3) Charlie Taylor, HM chief inspector of prisons, said the Home Office needed to “review” the situation at the Manston migrant processing centre. Taylor told Sky News: What was happening in Manston when I visited was that people were sleeping on the floors, on rubber mats down on the floors and then very thin blankets or mattresses. Many, many people in one room, all crammed together, very uncomfortable. The family room has lots and lots of different families sharing the same room, very young children, older children. For a few hours, this would be acceptable, but when people spend long periods of time there, it just isn’t. It would scare me if I went to a prison where the inmates didn’t have mattresses, where the inmates didn’t have flush toilets, where the inmates didn’t have phones so they could stay in touch with family and friends. These are three things we see in Manston – similarly if they couldn’t get out into the fresh air. As I said before, the Home Office must have control. Updated at 08:47 GMT BP’s big profits showed the need for a higher windfall tax, Cop26 president Alok Sharma said. He said: We need to raise more money from a windfall tax on oil and gas companies and actively encourage them to invest in renewable energy. Updated at 08:47 GMT Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick said asylum applications were taking too long to process. He told Times Radio: We want to get to a point where, on the UK side, we’re taking people into Manston, processing them very quickly, sending them to accommodation like hotels or alternatives, and making sure those hotels are evenly distributed across the country. the best possible value for the taxpayer, that claims are processed quickly. They are taking up a lot of time right now. And then those people, if successful, go on to live fulfilling lives in the UK and contribute to this country. If this is not the case, they are removed from the UK as soon as possible. But this is essentially the symptom of the problem. It will always be difficult for the Home Office to handle these symptoms if the scale of the challenge is as great as it is today. LBC reporter Charlotte Lynch tweeted that a senior Home Office source said the Home Secretary had refused to sign off on hotel bookings for migrants in Manston “because they were in Tory areas”. The source, who Lynch says is close to Manston, claims Suella Braverman only approved three hotels last week, which were in Labor constituencies. He notes that Braverman’s predecessor, Priti Patel, was accused of doing the same when she was home secretary and “they saw it coming”. It adds that Braverman has repeatedly denied “deliberately ignoring tips” and the Home Office says any claim a tip was ignored is “completely untrue”. EXCL: Senior Home Office source tells me Home Sec refused to sign off on hotel bookings for migrants in Manston last week ‘because they were in Tory areas’. @LBC — Charlotte Lynch (@charlotterlynch) November 1, 2022 Updated at 08:27 GMT Also on the morning show, Immigration Secretary Robert Jenrick tackled questions about whether people across the country could face tax rises for years to come as Rishi Sunak tries to tackle a black hole of up to £50bn in public finance. He told BBC Breakfast: I’m afraid you’ll have to wait for the chancellor’s statement in just two weeks. This will be the time when he will set out the tax changes he needs to make to ensure that we get the confidence of the financial markets, get the public finances back in good shape. Without that kind of economic stability, we can’t do any of the other things we want to do as a country. We cannot invest in our public services. We cannot ensure that people have financial security so that their mortgages do not increase or their pensions are reduced by inflation. And we can’t tackle big challenges like illegal immigration that require investment. Updated at 08:28 GMT Here is Suella Braverman leaving her home in London this morning on what has been a busy day for her. Suella Braverman leaves her home in London on Tuesday morning. Photo: Nigel Howard Updated at 08:28 GMT Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick said reports of diphtheria in Manston were “exaggerated”. Asked about reports of disease outbreaks, including cases of diphtheria, MRSA and scabies at the site, he told BBC Breakfast: Well, those reports are not correct. They have been exaggerated. I spoke to the doctors on site and there is a very good medical center with – when I was there – three doctors plus paramedics who support people with medical conditions. There were four cases of diphtheria in a population of about 4,000. But these are all people who entered the site with this status. They didn’t take it from there as far as we know. They have been isolated and treated appropriately. But that doesn’t mean I’m satisfied with the state of the site. I’m not. Updated at 08:29 GMT Rachel Hall Good morning, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is due to meet cabinet ministers this morning as doubts mount over his decision to reinstate Suella Braverman as home secretary. Braverman is facing a fresh backlash today after she referred to small boat crossings of the Channel as an “invasion” and growing concern over overcrowding at the Manston migrant processing center in Kent. This morning, Immigration Secretary Robert Jenrick made the broadcast rounds in an attempt to reassure the public that Braverman was right for the job. She told Sky News she had apologized for the emails sent from her personal device – which led to her resignation under Liz Truss – and in any case they were not “top secret”. He said: You can’t say it was a serious security breach. It wasn’t right, he apologized for it and now he has a big job to do as home secretary. He said instead he was focusing on developing a system “that welcomes the best and brightest but restricts people who come here illegally” because “that’s not what British people want to see” and argued that social housing should not be taken by economic migrants, citing Albanians. He argued that the “root cause” of what is happening at the Manston migrant processing center was not the government’s fault. He said: Conditions are bad. They are improving. We try to ensure that as many people as possible leave the site for better accommodation, mainly hotels, as soon as possible. It is not designed to be somewhere people stay for an extended period of time. It is, by necessity, relatively frugal. The task now is to ensure that it returns to its normal operating pattern. He admitted that people stayed there for more than 24 hours and slept on the floor on mats. He said: This is not a satisfactory situation. I’m not here to defend it. I would just say that the root cause of what we are seeing in Manston is not the government. Certainly not the brilliant Border Force staff who run the place, the contractors, the catering staff. The problem is that thousands of people cross the canal illegally every day. 9:00: Cabinet 10.30am: Judicial review of ‘pre-settled’ EU citizens’ right to abode in the UK, brought by the Independent Monitoring Authority (IMA) against the Home Office over its treatment of EU citizens granted pre-settled status according to the EU draft settlement. The hearing is expected to last two days with a decision at a later date. 11am: The Northern Ireland secretary will hold talks with Stormont leaders amid calls for an election in the region. 2.30pm: Defense Secretary Ben Wallace will appear before the Lords international relations and defense committee on defense concepts and capabilities. 2.30pm: Former Russian political prisoner Mikhail Khodorkovsky appears before the foreign affairs committee, which is looking into proxy private military companies. If there’s anything you think we’ve missed, please get in touch at [email protected] Updated at 08:50 GMT
