PHIL MAXWELL

The Government sees asylum seekers as a useful tool to divert attention attention from the cost of living crisis and the corruption they are steeped in. They’ve always shown contempt for human rights when it comes to refugees.

People risk their lives in small boats crossing the channel because they are denied a safe and legal route to apply for asylum in the UK.

In the 1980s the Liberal Democrat Council in Tower Hamlets attempted to house homeless Bangladeshi families on a disused boat on the river Thames. The idea scheme was put forward by a Lib Dem councillor who was also a Lloyds underwriter. Following a public outcry and campaign the idea was quietly dropped. I never thought that decades later the idea of putting vulnerable people on a barge would be embraced by the govenment of the day.

After being condemned as a fire risk the first Refugees were put on the vessel in Portland Port despite the fact that test results for Legionella in the water were positive.

Following a Home Office “incident management meeting” on 17th August officials concluded that no one else would be moved onto the Bibby Stockholm while a risk assessment was carried out, and it was then decided to move all 39 asylum seekers off the barge. The government has refused to answer questions about why all this was allowed to happen.

The cruelty and inhumanity of the government seems to have no limits. The ‘Stop the boats’ policy diguises an unwillingness to meet the bare minimum of the govenments responsibilities under international law towards refugees.

The government hopes eventually to ‘house’ 500 men on the barge. We all need to raise our voices to “BAN THE BARGE”.