Police plead for extra cash to deal with 500 barge migrants
Overcrowding and safety fears raised as asylum seeker vessel arrives in UK
MINISTERS have been urged to provide an extra £700,000 of policing amid safety fears over the UK’S first migrant barge, where 500 asylum seekers will be “cooped up” from next month.
The Bibby Stockholm, a barge that has been used to house oil and construction workers, arrived in Falmouth, Cornwall, yesterday to be refitted and refurbished before being towed to Portland Port, near Weymouth in Dorset, ready to take on board the asylum seekers next month.
It has 222 rooms with en suite bathrooms, leisure facilities such as pool tables and a gym, and catering, but will be converted to take up to 506 asylum seekers who will be required to share rooms with en suite washing facilities. Some will be at least three to a room. Though free to come and go, they will get only £9 a week.
The scheme is facing opposition from Richard Drax, the local Tory MP, and Dorset council who are considering legal action to block what they say is an inappropriate plan. David Sidwick, Dorset’s police and crime commissioner, is demanding Home Office funds to pay for the additional costs of policing the site.
Mr Drax said: “My concern is if things go wrong on board, there are going to be issues – whether health, crime or frustration – with a whole lot of people cooped up together for the first time on a barge that is itself like a quasi-prison.
“There are also concerns for my constituents. Who is going to monitor these men who have only £9 a week to spend. What are they going to do all day? Wander around?”
The barge will be fenced off where it is berthed to stop migrants roaming the busy port, which receives commercial ships and cruise liners. The port expects to bring in some 130,000 passengers this year.
There will be 24-hour security on the barge as well as at the gate to the port, a closed secure area.
Migrants are free to come and go but those who stay out beyond the voluntary 11pm curfew will be called by phone to check their whereabouts. Any who remain out for more than seven consecutive days and nights, or 14 days and nights within any six-month period, will face removal from Portland.
Councillors have been told that there will be hourly bus services to take migrants out of the port and on trips to Weymouth and potentially other major towns like Bournemouth.
The Archbishop of Canterbury will today lead an assault by the Church of England on Rishi Sunak’s new laws to extinguish the rights of migrants to claim asylum in the UK.
The Most Rev Justin Welby will be one of at least three leading Church of England bishops who will criticise the plans as the House of Lords debates the Government’s Illegal Migration Bill for the first time.