Illegal Migration Bill: Suella Braverman says cost of detaining asylum seekers is ‘unknown’

Suella Braverman has admitted she does not know how much her flagship Illegal Migration Bill will cost the taxpayer during an uncomfortable clash in Parliament.

Despite intense backlash from refugee charities, the Home Secretary has repeatedly backed the proposed new legislation - which would see anyone deemed to have entered the UK ‘illegally’ detained and then deported to another country. The government says this will stop people crossing the English Channel in small boats and help tackle the asylum seeker crisis the country is facing.

But in addition to the ‘moral’ criticism being levelled at the Illegal Migration Bill, there are questions about the practicality of the potential new law - particularly when it comes to finances. This topic was raised during a fiery Home Affairs Committee meeting on Wednesday (14 June), with chairwoman Dame Diana Johnson asking Braverman why there had still not been an “economic impact assessment” of the bill.

Braverman responded that this was “under review”, but insisted she believed the Illegal Migration Bill would produce “savings we cannot ignore”. She said: “We will stop spending £3 billion a year on the asylum system, £6 million a day on hotels. To me, the impacts are clear.”

Johnson, however, pointed out that part of the bill includes detaining migrants for up to 28 days. “How much will that cost?” she pressed, arguing that the Home Secretary must have an answer as “it has been 100 days since the bill was first introduced to the Commons”, and close to the point of becoming law.

But Braverman said the cost was currently “unknown” and argued the government would not be able to provide a response until the bill was functioning. “I simply cannot predict how many people will arrive on any one day, illegally,” she explained.

“When the bill comes into force [however] we will be able to take a view as to how and how quickly we are able to operationalise our detention powers and relocation powers. That will then form the costs.” She added that she’d be able to offer more answers once the government had a response from the courts about the “operability” of its proposal to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda.

This was not the only question Braverman did not seem to have the answers to. She was also grilled on how many asylum caseworkers the Home Office has, with Johnson pointing out that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has pledged to get to 2,500 by September.

The Home Secretary said the latest number she had was 1,281, which the committee quickly pointed out was the figure from March. “You don’t know today how many caseworkers you have and this is one of the Prime Minister’s top priorities [in order to] clear the backlog?”

Braverman said she would see if she could obtain the latest figures, but insisted she was “confident” that the 2,500 target would be hit by September.

Elsewhere, the Fareham MP was questioned about what would happen to a female asylum seeker who arrived in the UK ‘illegally’ after being trafficked for sex purposes. “Would she be arrested and detained?” Johnson asked.

Braverman argued that the majority of asylum seekers who cross the Channel were men - and that such situations involved a “minority”.

“But they still exist,” Johnson insisted, highlighting that the equalities impact assessment has said the Illegal Migration Bill will disproportionately affect women. “Could someone be detained if they were a victim of modern slavery or trafficking?” she pressed.

The Home Secretary did not give a direct answer, stating that the government took its “commitments and protections” under the Modern Slavery Act “very seriously”. She continued: “We want to make sure the balance is struck. We have seen people who are not real victims exploit our rules on Modern Slavery.

“So we need to stop this gaming of our rules, and the measures in the bill will do that. This in turn will actually free up our resources to help genuine victims.”