Former prime ministers, home secretaries and senior civil servants could be called to testify in an ongoing inquiry into unlawful conditions at a migrant processing centre.
A newly-released Home Office brief has revealed the potential scope of the inquiry into the overcrowding crisis at Manston detention centre in the autumn of 2022.
Incidents at Manston included a death in custody, unlawful detention of adults and children, and Home Office officials charged with conspiracy to steal and misconduct in public office, the document outlines.
The briefing document, marked officially sensitive, has been made public after an application by The Independent, The Guardian and the BBC to a High Court Judge.
It was prepared for home secretary Yvette Cooper a few weeks after Labour won the general election in July last year.
Ms Cooper was told that “the investigation of the conditions at Manston will probably be reputationally damaging for the Home Office”.
More than 18,000 people arrived on small boats to the UK between August and November 2022, with almost all of them being detained and held at Manston. People were forced to sleep on damp and mouldy wooden flooring without adequate bedding, denied warm clothing and footwear and unable to access clean clothes, according to separate legal submissions.
The site opened as a processing centre in February 2022, with small-boat migrants meant to be held there for short periods after arriving in the UK to undergo checks.
They would then be moved into Home Office asylum accommodation, most likely a hotel. The site was meant to have capacity for between 1,000 and 1,600 people, with migrants staying there for under 14 hours, but by 31 October 2022 there were around 4,000 people at Manston.
Migrants were held at the site for far too long, an official inspection found, with one family reportedly held for 32 days.
Diphtheria also spread at the base, and one migrant 31-year-old Hussein Haseeb Ahmed died in hospital on 19 November after contracting the disease. The medical cause of death was un-ascertained but an inquest heard that he had been suffering from breathlessness, a fever and drowsiness.
An independent inquiry into the crisis has been set up, chaired by Sophie Cartwright KC, to investigate what went wrong.
The internal brief also lists a number of allegations that were raised with the Home Office about the worrying conditions at Manston, a former military base in Kent, including misfeasance in public office, breaches of the European Convention of Human Rights, breaches of the duty to safeguard children, and breaches of planning permission, safety, fire, and food safety regulations.
Phones were unlawfully seized from residents, and property and money was confiscated and never returned, according to concerns flagged to the Home Office in October and November 2022.
The brief identifies key individuals who will likely be called up to the inquiry, which was launched in March this year. These include three former home secretaries, Priti Patel, Suella Braverman and Grant Shapps, as well as five former immigration ministers, the Home Office’s most senior civil servant Matthew Rycroft at the time, other senior civil servants, and a litany of officials from immigration enforcement, border force, asylum and private offices.
The brief, drawn up by the legal director at the Home Office, also lists Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak, and Ben Wallace as ministers who will likely be asked to give evidence about how their decision making impacted the crisis at Manston in 2022.
Charlotte Khan, Head of Advocacy and Public Affairs at Care4Calais said: “This is a damning charge list, and speaks to the scale of the scandal that ensued at Manston in late 2022.
“Reputational damage should be the least of the Home Office’s worries. People who were unlawfully held at Manston have long told us about the inhumane conditions they were kept under, but this briefing makes it clear that three senior Conservative politicians are in the dock for overseeing the unlawful detention of people, including children, alleged human rights breaches, and a death in custody.
“This was no way to treat fellow humans, and those in power at the time must be held accountable for the decisions made under their watch. The Inquiry must serve justice for those subjected to this cruelty at Manston.”
A Home Office spokesperson said: “The home secretary acted on the advice she was given to establish an independent inquiry into events at the Manston short-term holding facility between June and November 2022, in line with the commitments made by her predecessors, and on the terms agreed through the subsequent legal process.
“That inquiry will now proceed and we are supporting it fully, but it would be inappropriate to comment further whilst it is ongoing.”
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