Suella Braverman has questioned the productivity of civil servants processing asylum claims and refused to rule out the use of cruise ships to accommodate UK asylum seekers after admitting the cost of housing applicants would rise to £ 3.5 billion this year.
The Home Secretary told peers on Wednesday that the productivity of her department’s staff had been “too low”, resulting in staff handling an average of one case a week.
Braverman also confirmed reports that the Home Office is looking at ideas to use alternative accommodation, other than hotels, to house asylum seekers, and she suggested that officials are in talks with shipping companies.
She was accused of failing to ensure there was enough hotel accommodation to accommodate asylum seekers this autumn, leading to her unlawful detention at the Manston data processing center last month. Braverman denied being responsible for the lack of accommodation.
Appearing before the House of Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee, she said: “There is a huge amount of transformation that we want to undertake when it comes to asylum casework.
“I should just say for context, what I have found in my few months here at the Home Office is that we have very different practices. Our asylum casework team is doing a great job, but their productivity is frankly too low. The average decision rate per person per week is one. We need to increase it significantly.”
The government has doubled the number of employees, Braverman said, and officials have tried a faster system, which she hoped would mean the number of cases covered by one worker would triple.
Addressing the issue of hotel accommodation for asylum seekers – an issue that has angered backbench Conservative MPs – she confirmed her office was looking at alternative accommodation, including on cruise ships.
“Then you asked about cruise ships. We want to end the use of hotels as quickly as possible because it is an unacceptable cost to the taxpayer, it is over £5 million a day just for hotel use,” she said.
“We will offer a range of alternative sites. These will include disused holiday parks, former student halls. I have to say we are looking at those sites, I wouldn’t say anything is confirmed yet,” she said.
Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Alistair Carmichael said Braverman was doubling down on the same failed approach as other recent home ministers. “Her ludicrous proposals to put refugees on cruise ships will once again be ineffective and incredibly expensive,” he said.
Braverman confirmed reports that he plans to change anti-slavery laws over concerns that a minority of asylum seekers are being mistreated under them. However, neither she nor Matthew Rycroft, permanent secretary at the Home Office, could explain why no anti-slavery commissioner had been appointed to study the new laws, despite the legal requirement for one to be in the post.
The last commissioner, Dame Sarah Thornton, left the job in April. Rycroft said he would write to the committee with an explanation.
Braverman confirmed the government would spend £3.5bn on accommodation and support for asylum seekers and refugees in 2022-23, including £2.3bn on hotels.
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Currently, 57,000 people are accommodated by local authorities under the asylum dispersal scheme – a figure she said she wants to increase to 100,000.
Braverman was questioned by his Labor colleague Shami Chakrabarti about reports that government officials admitted in leaked emails that hundreds of people were illegally detained in immigration removal centers in November.
The detention centers have been used to hold around 450 people, described in one email as an “overflow” from the Manston processing facility.
One November 4 email obtained by the BBC said their detention was “no longer legal”, adding: “We need to move them to hotels as soon as possible”.
Braverman said thousands of people arrived in the UK in small boats in October and there were not enough beds in suitable accommodation.
“The reality in those few weeks was that the outflow was outstripped by the inflow because it was very difficult to secure enough beds across the country. The situation was very challenging,” she said.
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