Scottish politicians have united to condemn an “inhumane and brutal” Home Office decision to bus asylum seekers who crossed the Channel 500 miles to Scotland for processing.
Dozens of migrants who would normally be held close to where they entered Britain are being made to travel more than nine hours to Dungavel immigration detention facility in Strathaven, South Lanarkshire.
The SNP, along with Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party, have banded together to denounce the move. Anne McLaughlin, the SNP immigration spokeswoman at Westminster, accused the Home Office of shameful conduct and said an independent Scotland would take a more compassionate approach.
She said: “The vast majority of people who cross the Channel have survived significant trauma. To then stick them on a bus for a 500-mile trip to be processed and kept in a detention centre in Scotland is inhumane and shameful.
“The Tory government needs to repair its damaging fallout with France, which is undermining efforts to tackle people smugglers, and to restore safe legal routes for those whose asylum claims should be processed here — for example, if they have family in the UK.” Yesterday Priti Patel, the home secretary, argued that “unacceptable” numbers had been crossing the Channel as it emerged that the number to have reached Britain by boat this year is more than three times last year’s total; 886 people arrived last Saturday alone.
Patel told MPs that regions around the UK needed to “play their part” in offering accommodation to asylum seekers and accused Scotland in particular of not pulling its weight.
Stuart McDonald, the SNP home affairs spokesman, described the accusation as outrageous and said that “every single local authority in Scotland is anxious to play its part in resettling refugees”.
Alistair Carmichael, home affairs spokesman for the Liberal Democrats and MP for Orkney & Shetland, urged the Home Office not to demonise those who took illegal and unsafe routes. “Instead of finding ever more cruel and disrespectful ways of treating some of the most desperate and vulnerable people in the world they should be building a system that offers safe and legal routes to safety,” he said.
Kate Alexander, director of Scottish Detainee Visitors, said she learnt in mid-October that “around 50 people” who had crossed the Channel had been brought to Dungavel for processing. Staff told her this was the second time this had happened within a month. Alexander said that she was concerned asylum seekers may not be getting any legal advice.
The Green Party’s Ross Greer accused the Home Office of institutional malice and cruelty. Greer, an MSP for West Scotland, said: “Many of the people who have crossed the Channel have fled war, poverty, violence and persecution. The last thing they need is to be put on a 500-mile bus journey and detained in somewhere as inhumane and brutal as Dungavel.”
Concern has previously been raised about the running of the Dungavel facility after inspectors found women were being made to mix with men with a history of sexual violence. It is understood that no women have been sent there for processing.
The Home Office said: “The British public have had enough of seeing people die in the Channel while ruthless criminal gangs profit from their misery and our New Plan for Immigration will fix the broken system which encourages migrants to make this lethal journey. People should claim asylum in the first safe country they reach, rather than making dangerous journeys to the UK.”
