‘Guantanamo-on-ouse’ migrant camp delayed after legal action by Tory council
A PROPOSED migrant camp in north Yorkshire – dubbed Guantanamo-onouse – has been delayed after a Tory council began legal action to block it.
The former RAF base in Linton-onouse was due to receive its first 60 asylum seekers by today, but Home Office sources admitted it had been delayed because of a local revolt over the plans to turn it into a camp holding up to 1,500 migrants.
It has been opposed by not only the villagers, who will be outnumbered two-to-one by the asylum seekers, but also Kevin Hollinrake, the local Conservative MP, and Tory-controlled Hambleton council, whose chief executive has begun legal proceedings with a pre-action letter to the Home Office.
They claim that it is inappropriate to place the camp in the heart of a small village, and say the Government has failed to follow proper consultation procedures in its rush to set it up. It was announced on the same day as Boris Johnson unveiled plans to send migrants to Rwanda.
Critics who want the scheme scrapped were given renewed impetus after the Home Office admitted in a letter to Justin Ives, Hambleton’s chief executive, that “no final decision has been taken by ministers to accommodate asylum seekers at RAF Linton”.
Mr Hollinrake raised the plans with Mr Johnson at last week’s meeting of the 1922 Committee of backbenchers, where he said the Prime Minister had promised “he would look at it again”.
“I don’t think there is any way of mitigating the impact. It is completely unsuitable to have 1,500 young single men at the heart of a community who are free to come and go and are not subject to any formal curfew restrictions,” the MP said.
“It is not as if all these people are malignant. It is a fact that in any cohort of 1,500 people you are going to have some dodgy characters. That’s what the village is afraid of.”
Linton-on-ouse RAF base – where the Duke of Cambridge trained – is the first of a network of proposed asylum camps to help meet the Government’s pledge to end the use of hotels for asylum seekers, which is costing the Government £4.7million a day.
The Home Office is also preparing to issue the first removal notices to migrants who will be flown on a one way ticket to Rwanda where they will claim asylum.