The travel firm behind the controversial Bibby Stockholm migrant barge has been handed another £150m government contract, just months after Labour shut the vessel down following a litany of issues.
The barge, which was based in Portland Port in Dorset, was used to house asylum seekers from 2023-2024 and was plagued with problems, including an outbreak of legionnaires disease that forced the temporary evacuation of residents onboard.
An asylum seeker, Leonard Farruku, also took his own life on the barge in 2023, and other residents warned the site was unsafe and overcrowded.
Corporate Travel Management (CTM), an Australian travel firm which was previously slammed for its handling of Covid quarantine hotels, was given the £1.6bn two-year Bibby contract to provide asylum ships and other accommodation. However, the value will now be significantly less than this, after Labour decided to close down the Bibby Stockholm.
Now CTM has been given a further £150m contract to organise government travel services from 2025 to 2028, research company Tussell has found.
Tussell estimates that since 2015 CTM has won a total of 143 contracts worth £3.1bn.
Reacting to the new contract, Steve Smith, CEO of refugee charity Care4Calais, said: “It appears that corporate monoliths receive vast sums of taxpayers’ money to deliver public services with minimal scrutiny or accountability. This cannot be right.”
On its website, CTM describes itself as “a global provider of innovative and cost-effective travel solutions spanning corporate, events, leisure, loyalty and wholesale travel”.
Then-prime minister Rishi Sunak announced plans for two further barges to be purchased to house up to 1,000 migrants in June 2023, but they never materialised and the only barge in use was the Bibby Stockholm.
CTM chief executive Jamie Pherous told the Australian Financial Review newspaper in a 2020 interview that the company received Covid-related contracts from the UK government after a person “close to” then prime minister Boris Johnson called him for help.
The first contract involved repatriating UK citizens from abroad. CTM then got involved in providing hotel quarantine services but faced criticism for the high prices.
All asylum seekers were moved off the Bibby Stockholm barge by the end of December last year, and it was pictured in January being towed out of Portland Port.
Migrants on the barge said they felt like prisoners, were searched every time they went outside, and were unable to see their friends due to the detention-like conditions on the barge.
One asylum seeker told researchers last year: “They search everything - we have to remove belts, caps, jackets, then go through the scanner and luggage would go through the machine. If we have liquids, they check this. I tried to avoid the staff all the time. If they said something rude I kept silent.
“If you do something, they make reports. Because of this, when I was there I didn’t go outside of the barge for 14 days, for two weeks. I just stayed in the room, because of the depression. I was so stressed because of my case.”
Nicola David, from One Life to Live, which supported asylum seekers on the Bibby, said: “CTM is associated with operating the Bibby Stockholm - and the barge was a stain on our history of accommodating asylum seekers. Nothing about it went well, from legionella to self-harm and suicide on board.
“This new contract should concern everyone.”
