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Home Office spent £19 million running marquees at overcrowded Manston migrant site
25 October 2024, 08:55 | Updated: 25 October 2024, 08:57
The Home Office spent £19 million running overcrowded tents in poor conditions at the Manston processing site for small boat arrivals, LBC can reveal.
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Fresh figures reveal Tory ministers splashed the money maintaining eight tents at the holding facility in Kent over 16 months between May 2022 and September 2023.
Earlier this year, the Home Office said it would start a statutory inquiry into conditions at Manston following reports of overcrowding and disease, including diphtheria, in late 2022.
A Labour peer told LBC she was “appalled” by the cost and urged the government to complete a public inquiry into what she called a “financial and human rights scandal”.
Baroness Shami Chakrabarti, who is a barrister and human rights activist, said: “We're talking about millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money alongside deeply offensive, inhumane conditions.
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“We really need to investigate this, and in particular, I do want to know who profited, and what, if any, were the relationships between ministers, senior officials and private contractors that were involved.”
Manston sources said conditions were “deplorable” with thousands of migrants, including children, sleeping on “grass and cardboard boxes” during the period covered by LBC’s figures.
The marquees have a capacity of around 2,200 people but it is widely reported numbers regularly exceeded that figure.
Since, things are said to have vastly improved, with investment in enhanced accommodation, including for people detained longer than one day, as well as 24/7 healthcare.
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It is understood the marquees are still used as and when required by the arrival of migrants on small boats.
A freedom of information request was submitted to the Home Office in July 2023, but officials did not return a response until a year later.
Monthly running costs, including heating, lighting and ventilation, that once hit £460,691 in March 2023, averaged £200,000 a month.
Steve Smith, Chief Executive at Care4Calais, told LBC: “The dates that you've got when they provided the information for was when Manston was at its worst.
“[The marquees] were massively overcrowded. You had men, women, and children, families together, all crammed into the same place, into the same space. We heard stories of children sleeping sitting up.
“Those marquees were not in any way shape or form weatherproof or heated, so they were absolutely freezing conditions in winter.”
In January 2022, then Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick also introduced the Short-term Holding Facility (Amendment) Rules 2022.
Where detainees could previously be held for a maximum of 24 hours in the Manston Reception Centre, it was extended to 96 hours or even longer with approval from the Home Secretary.
The updated rules also meant detainees were no longer guaranteed accommodation separated by sex.
A source in the Prison Officers’ Association, representing staff at Manston, told LBC conditions were “deplorable” for both detainees and colleagues.
“Residents were forced to sleep on plywood boards on grass and hard standings,” they told LBC.
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“Our members found themselves intervening in fights between residents who were squabbling over cardboard boxes to sleep on to provide insulation from the ground.
“At one point there were over 2,500 residents in Marquees without a single bed or mattress on site.”
Earlier this month, Sir Keir Starmer’s government invited firms to bid on a contract worth £521m to continue operating Manston and another site, Western Jet Foil, until at least 2032.
Millions spent on marquees has contributed to what the Institute for Fiscal Studies recently described as “woeful budgeting” by the Home Office, which it said resulted in a £7.6billion over-spend.
Some wedding-style marquees of similar capacities have been advertised online for less than £10,000, but the Government spent £700,000 to install and maintain just the temporary flooring of Manston’s eight marquees.
In February 2024 then Home Secretary James Cleverly also said an emergency £2.6bn was needed to top up the spend on housing asylum seekers in hotel rooms.
It was previously reported by the National Audit Office in December 2023 the cost of 64,000 hotel beds was £274m.
The Home Office was unable to say when an inquiry into Manston will begin, but it is understood information will follow in due course.
