Asylum seekers on the Bibby Stockholm barge are becoming increasingly desperate about their living conditions as the Home Office admitted that the vessel has cost taxpayers more than £22m so far.
After the suicide of an unidentified resident on Tuesday, asylum seekers said that conditions had deteriorated since up to 300 people were moved on to the barge.
The government disclosed that the “vessel accommodation services” related to the barge in Portland, Dorset, had costs of £22,450,772.
Given that the barge has a capacity of about 500 residents, and if it is used for an initial 18 months, the cost works out as £91 a day for each resident.
Asylum seekers told the Guardian about their concerns over the security onboard which requires them to go through airport-style security and body searches even if they just want to step outside for a cigarette, a deterioration in the quality of food, and shortages for those at the end of the queue.
“The boat is like a prison and more and more things are going wrong,” said one asylum seeker.
The asylum seekers said they initially grieved for a man who is still alive after the name and photo of the wrong person was publicised by one organisation as being the man who died.
“The conditions are getting worse and worse,” said another asylum seeker. “We are terrified they will unlock the boat and sail it away to Rwanda.”
Home Office sources said they are unable to release the correct name of the man who died yet as certain “protocols” have to be followed. Asylum seekers on the barge say that because of the lack of clear information from the Home Office, speculation has filled the void.
“We are distressed that we got information about the wrong man who took his life. The Home Office needs to tell us the name of the right man,” said one asylum seeker. “We are all feeling very distressed. The Home Office wants to close our eyes and blindfold us.”
Initially asylum seekers said they were told only about an “unfortunate incident” after the man’s death.
Another asylum seeker said: “Everyone is terrified. That’s mainly due to the secrecy of the barge’s management over the situation, like they’re trying to find a convincing story to tell us and the public.”
The asylum seekers on the barge followed the news about the voting in favour of the new Rwanda bill on Tuesday evening.
“People are hearing increasing bad news. They are afraid they will be going to Rwanda and are very depressed. People are crying. They feel like they’re in a jail,” one said.
The cost of the barge was set out in a letter sent by Matthew Rycroft, the Home Office’s permanent secretary, to the home affairs select committee’s chair, Diana Johnson.
At a session of the committee she told immigration ministers that she was “just flabbergasted that a value-for-money assessment was not carried out at the time that the contract was let”.
Tom Pursglove, the new legal migration minister, told her it was being “updated” and added: “This is undoubtedly a more cost-effective way of providing accommodation.”
As well as the payment for providing accommodation services on Bibby Stockholm, the government is also paying Dorset council £3,500 for each occupied bed on the vessel, which can hold up to 504 people.
Rycroft’s letter also showed that, since 2020, just 1,182 people who arrived on small boats across the Channel had been returned to their home country out of more than 111,800 who have arrived in that time period.
Most of the returns were Albanian – a country with which the UK has an agreement – and there were only 420 who were sent back to other countries over three years.
During the session, it was admitted that 132 unaccompanied children who had disappeared from Home Office accommodation are still missing. Earlier this year, the figure was 154.
Some have expressed concerns that ministers have not been putting enough resources into finding children who have been trafficked from hotels.
The SNP MP Alison Thewliss told Pursglove: “You’re not doing a very good job of it if 132 out of 154 are still missing … you don’t care, do you?”
Pursglove said that was a “pretty outrageous suggestion”.
The committee heard that of those missing, 103 were now adults and 29 were still under 18.
