UK migrants: Suella Braverman unable to explain legal route for migrants to enter the UK

Fareham MP Suella Braverman was asked in a home affairs committee meeting how a hypothetical African teenager could secure a route to seek asylum in the UK. However, she was unable to produce an answer that didn’t initially involve arriving in the UK illegally.

Ms Braverman said ‘if you are able to get to the UK you are able to put in an application for asylum’ and that would be the process to enter the country.

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But fellow Conservative Tim Loughton MP replied: ‘I would only enter the UK illegally then wouldn’t I? How could I arrive in the UK if I didn't have permission to get onto an aircraft legally.’

Permanent Home Office under secretary, Mathew Rycroft, said: ‘Depending on which country you are from you could engage with United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)’ but added that this was not a possibility in every country.

During the hearing, the Fareham MP stated that ‘as the home secretary I do take the responsibility, ultimately, for the performance of the Home Office’, when asked about who was to blame for the failings at Manston by the committee chair, Dame Diana Johnson.

She said: ‘I’m very clear at who’s at fault, it’s the people coming here illegally, people smugglers – people who are choosing to take an illegal and dangerous journey for economic reasons – they are at fault here’.

Dame Diana Johnson said: ‘The Home Office process did not work, it failed. So I'm just trying to work out why that was and who was responsible, because these numbers were foreseeable, hotels were available. Why did you end up with a position of 4,000 people at Manston?’

The Manston refugee centre in Kent was established earlier this year to accommodate a rising influx of small boat refugees crossing the channel.

It came under criticism last month for overcrowding a centre built for 1,600 occupants, with 4,000 occupants, due to a backlog in asylum processing, which a home affairs committee report claimed was due in part to ‘antiquated IT systems, high staff turnover and too few staff’.