Revealing the UK government’s negligence at the Manston asylum Centre

Recently, representatives of the Home Office acknowledged that they no longer have any control over the situation at the asylum center. In the fall of 2022, an outbreak of scabies and diphtheria was caused by the overcrowding of asylum seekers held at the Manston Center, a former RAF base in Kent.

Refugees who crossed the English Channel in small boats were forced to sleep on contaminated floors or on cardboard boxes. There have also been allegations of sexual abuse of women by guards.

Conditions at Manston are much worse than news reports indicate, according to government documents that were recently leaked to the UK High Court. The court also concluded that since nothing seems to have been done, it might be challenging to find the truth.

It may now be necessary for two former prime ministers, Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak, as well as three former home secretaries, Priti Patel, Grant Shapps, and Suela Braverman, to attend a formal investigation.

According to new documents, 18,000 of the 29,000 asylum seekers processed between June and November 2022 were detained at Manston for longer than the 24-hour limit. Tens of millions of pounds in compensation could now be demanded from the UK government.

The situation became critical in the autumn of 2022, when the site, which was designed to hold a maximum of 1,600 people, was accommodating 4,000. On 19 November, an asylum seeker who was processed at Manston, died in hospital after contracting diphtheria.

Lawyers for the asylum seekers bringing the high court challenge said in their written submissions: “It appears to be uncontroversial that there was large-scale law-breaking by the defendants’ department [the Home Office]”, adding that multiple members of staff are involved in “allegations of systemic failure” and that there is a need to examine “questions of management and institutional culture”.

One of the main questions the lawyers hope the inquiry will try to answer is whether either Patel or Braverman gave an order to stop transferring newly arrived asylum seekers from Manston to hotels because of criticism over the use of expensive accommodation to house them – a decision that led to the overcrowding crisis at the processing Centre.