The Bibby Stockholm barge fiasco shows Government won't listen to wise voices: Greg Wright

Instead of listening to observers who raised well-founded health and safety concerns, the Government has ploughed ahead with a flawed scheme which is apparently doing nothing to halt the small boats which continue to make the hazardous channel crossing.

The Prime Minister has doggedly defended the Government’s decision to accommodate asylum seekers on the Bibby Stockholm barge. Rishi Sunak claims the Government’s approach to dealing with the Channel crossings was fairer for the taxpayer than putting up asylum seekers in hotels. Migrants were housed on the barge off the Dorset coast on Monday last week. They had to be removed on Friday when traces of Legionella were found in the water supply, a bacteria which can cause the potentially fatal Legionnaires’ disease.

The Government hopes that the use of the Bibby Stockholm, together with former military bases, will help reduce the £6m a day it is spending on hotel bills for asylum seekers waiting for claims to be processed. However, the removal of the 39 people who had boarded the vessel has forced them back into alternative accommodation.

Mr Sunak said: “This is about fairness. It is about the unfairness, in fact, of British taxpayers forking out £5m or £6m a day to house illegal migrants in hotels up and down the country, with all the pressure that puts on local communities. We’ve got to find alternatives to that; that is what the barge is about and that is why we are committed to it. But more fundamentally, we’ve just got to stop people coming here in the first place illegally."

Meanwhile, there were further signs of activity in the English Channel after large numbers of migrants made the crossing in recent days. More than 1,600 people were detected making the journey from France on Thursday to Saturday last week according to provisional Home Office figures, although there were no recorded crossings on Sunday. At least six people died and dozens were rescued after a boat got into difficulty off the coast of Sangatte, northern France, on Saturday.

Steve Smith, chief executive of charity Care4Calais, said: “The Bibby Stockholm is a visual illustration of this Government’s hostile environment against refugees, but it has also fast become a symbol for the shambolic incompetence which has broken Britain’s asylum system.” The Fire Brigades Union assistant general secretary Ben Selby said their safety concerns about the vessel, which he branded a “potential death trap”, remain.

To an outsider, the solution seems obvious. The Government must speed up the processing of asylum applications to reduce the strain on the taxpayer and ensure victims of persecution find a safe haven. Mr Sunak should establish a task force of business leaders, who are willing to canvass a wide range of opinions, in order to find a humane and cost effective way of managing the crisis.

Greg Wright is the deputy business editor of The Yorkshire Post