The Home Office has spent more than £60,000 on entertainment for people detained at the Manston migrant processing centre, including on TVs, PlayStations and Nintendos, it was revealed today.
The money purchased TVs with satellite channels, Xboxes and other gaming consoles, as well as newspaper and magazine subscriptions.
It comes in the same week that Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer toughened up on immigration, giving a speech in which he pledged to drastically reduce net migration to avoid the UK becoming an ‘island of strangers’.
The Manston facility in Kent typically only holds migrants for up to 48 hours, before they are moved into more suitable accommodation while any asylum claims.
The figure comes from a Freedom of Information request concerning the centre, reported by GB News.
According to the data, the Home Office spent almost £12,000 on TVs for the Manston over the last three years.
The Home Office also spent more than £15,000 on video game consoles, including PlayStations, Nintendos and Xboxes.
According to GB News, when combined with newspaper and magazine subscriptions it means some £60,000 has been spent on entertainment for the centre in the last three years.
The Home Office has spent more than £60,000 on entertainment for people detained at the Manston migrant processing centre, FOI data shows
Keir Starmer pledged to end the ‘betrayal’ of Britain’s reliance on cheap foreign labour, hiking skills thresholds and toughening rules on fluency in English this week
Former Chief Executive of Border Force, Tony Smith, commented: ‘In my day, illegal entrants were detained and wherever possible put into a fast-track asylum system with a focus on rapid processing and removal.
‘Nowadays migrants know that it’s highly unlikely you will ever get removed if you come by boat, and our asylum support system will look after you in a way that’s a far cry from the tents of Calais.
‘I’m afraid that this simply fuels the pull factor and the smuggling pipeline into the UK, and it will do nothing to achieve the reduction in the arrival numbers that most people want to see.’
It comes just days after the Prime Minister insisted in a major speech that he had long believed in wanting to limit the number of new arrivals to Britain and booting out foreign criminals.
He warned the country risks becoming an ‘island of strangers’ and that high migration numbers had caused ‘incalculable damage’ to public services, housing and the economy.
The Government’s long-awaited White Paper promised to curb the power of judges to block deportations and to reduce immigration to Britain by 98,000 a year.
It comes just days after the Prime Minister insisted in a major speech that he had long believed in wanting to limit the number of new arrivals to Britain (Pictured: Manston processing centre)
The Manston facility in Kent typically only holds migrants for up to 48 hours, before they are moved into more suitable accommodation while any asylum claims
Under the blueprint, skills thresholds will be hiked and rules on fluency in English toughened.
Migrants will also be required to wait 10 years for citizenship rather than the current five, and face deportation for even lower-level crimes.
Graduate visas will be reduced to 18 months, and a new levy introduced on income that universities generate from international students.
Requirements that sponsoring institutions must meet in order to recruit international students are also being tightened.
A Home Office spokesperson said: ‘The majority of the expenditure occurred under the previous government. It was used on TV monitors which provide information and instructions for those at Manston.
‘This new government is now reviewing this spend.’
