Nigel Farage has issued a bleak outlook for the UK as the Home Office faces a legal challenge over plans for a £20,000-a-day migrant barge.
Tory-run Dorset Council is opposed to the use of Portland Port as the site for the plans, with local MP Richard Drax saying he is working to get the plan “consigned to the dustbin”.
The Bibby Stockholm vessel will reportedly cost taxpayers more than £20,000 a day, and could accommodate more than 500 migrants.
GB News presenter Nigel Farage says the plan will make little difference and Britain will be overwhelmed by the influx of migrants crossing the Channel regardless.
Portland Harbour is being used as the site for the barge
GB News / PA
He told Dan Wootton: “If May is calm, the barge will be full. The announcements last week, there’s a former training site in East Sussex that will take 1200, on one day last year, almost 1300 came in one day.
“They have not thought this through. They have no idea what is coming this summer.
“We are going to be literally overwhelmed. There’s no point complaining anymore. Whether it’s the home of the Dambusters or Portland Harbour, a place where cruise liners dock and big money comes into Dorset, you’re all going to lose.
“No more appeals will be successful, every port will be used, every military base will be used, and after that, goodness knows what they’ll do.
“We are no closer to any of this being solved, despite the words we hear from the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister.
“We are no closer.”
Portland Port confirmed it had been selected by the Home Office as a site for a migrant barge, but Dorset Council said it has “serious concerns about the suitability of the location for this facility”.
Details of any agreement with Liverpool-based Bibby Marine Limited and the costs were unclear, but the 93-metre long vessel can house up to 506 people in its 222 bedrooms.
Migrant crisis: Deal to house asylum seekers on huge barge to be announcedGB NewsThe Times reported the vessel would cost £15,000 a day to charter, with the cost of berthing it in Portland upwards of £4,500 a day, and additional expenditure required on services including security and catering.
Mr Drax, the South Dorset MP, said the barge was being “dumped on our door” without consultation by the Home Office as he urged Ms Braverman to scrap the idea.
“Every option’s being looked at including legal action,” he told the PA news agency.
“We want to get this consigned to the dustbin before anything’s signed.
“We want to activate ourselves and say look Home Secretary, sorry, this is not the right place, can you please cancel this.”
He raised concerns about the practicality of keeping hundreds of vulnerable individuals in a “very, very restricted area”, placing extra pressure on the port’s “very small” police force.
“They will be allowed out on a bus every so often but in effect will be incarcerated for quite a lot of the time,” he said.
A Home Office spokeswoman said: “The pressure on the asylum system has continued to grow and requires us to look at a range of accommodation options which offer better value for money for taxpayers than hotels.”
Plans for other sites to house migrants under the Government’s new policy to curb the use of taxpayer-funded hotels could also end up in the courts.
Conservative-run local authorities have threatened legal action against the Home Office over the proposal to use RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire and RAF Wethersfield in Essex to house thousands of migrants.
The Home Office says new types of accommodation must be used to reduce a £6 million daily bill for using hotels.
