Boat migrants will be put on ex-cruise liners

cHaNNEL boat migrants will be housed on cruise ships for the first time, the Daily Mail can reveal today.

Rishi Sunak announced the acquisition of two vessels on Monday and it can now be confirmed they are passenger liners.

They will house up to 1,000 small boat migrants between them but the ships’ names are being withheld by the Home Office. although cruise liners have not before been used for channel arrivals they have hosted Ukrainian refugees in Scotland.

One of the vessels secured by the Home Office is thought to be heading for Merseyside.

The site being looked at for the other cruise ship is unclear but Teesport, near Middlesbrough, is thought to be a contender.

Newcastle, Felixstowe in Suffolk, Harwich in Essex and the Royal London Docks are also under consideration, The Guardian reported.

In a speech at Dover on Monday Mr Sunak said: ‘To reduce pressures on local communities, we’ll also house people on ships. The first will arrive in Portland in the next fortnight. and we’ve secured another two that will accommodate another 1,000.’

The Mail reported yesterday that the French authorities are intercepting more than half of the crossings, compared with four in ten last year. about 7,600 people have crossed the channel illegally so far this year, down from just under 10,000 in the same period last year.

Using hotels as migrant accommodation is costing the taxpayer £6million a day. Former Ministry of Defence bases at Wethersfield in Essex and Scampton in Lincolnshire are due to receive their first migrants soon with numbers rising to 3,000 by autumn.

civil servants are also planning accommodation centres at Bexhill, East Sussex, and catterick, North Yorkshire.

Last night Dorset council said it was dropping a challenge against the Home Office’s plan for the Portland ship.