Sunak Pledges New Centres For 3,000 Migrants In Just Months

Two more ships set to house Channel migrants

- Nicholas Cecil and Rachael Burford 

RISHI SUNAK vowed today that nearly 3,000 people will be housed at two new immigration centres in Britain within months but faced fresh court challenges to the controversial plans.

Giving an update on his efforts to stop the flow of small boats across the Channel carrying economic migrants and asylum seekers, the Prime Minister stressed that a giant barge to house hundred of arrivals in the UK would arrive at Portland, Dorset, within 14 days.

The Government had also “secured” two more ships to accommodate 1,000 more people who had risked their lives making the dangerous journey from France to reach Britain in often unseaworthy vessels run by criminal gangs.

After going out with the Small Boats Operational Command into the Channel this morning, Mr Sunak was set to say at a press conference in Dover: “Our plan is starting to work. In the five months since I launched the plan, crossings are now down 20 per cent compared to last year.”

However, several strands of his immigration strategy, including planned Rwanda deportation flights, are deeply controversial and Enver Solomon, chief executive of the Refugee Council, criticised it as “failing, costing billions of pounds and causing immense human misery”.