Suella Braverman criticised for ‘invasion’ claim amid asylum centre crisis

Suella Braverman has been accused of ‘putting lives at risk’ after she claimed the UK was facing an “invasion’ on the south coast less than a day after a firebomb attack on an immigration centre in Dover. The embattled home secretary also told MPs she would ‘do whatever it takes’ to fix what she described as a ‘hopelessly lax’ asylum system. Her remarks were immediately condemned as inflammatory. One Labour MP said similar language was why ‘racists and extremists feel emboldened to attack’ vulnerable asylum seekers. The row erupted as the prime minister Rishi Sunak faced growing questions over his decision to reappoint Ms Braverman to the role last week, just days after she resigned over a breach of the ministerial code.Just hours before her ‘invasion’ claim she was forced to admit she sent official documents from her government email address to her personal account six times, in a clear breach of the rules. Ms Braverman, who was also at the centre of controversy earlier this month when she said it was her ‘dream’ to send a planeload of migrants to Rwanda, was defending her handling of the Kent asylum centre crisis when she told MPs: ‘Let’s be clear about what is really going on here: the British people deserve to know which party is serious about stopping the invasion on our southern coast and which party is not.’Some 40,000 people have arrived on the south coast this year alone. Many of them facilitated by criminal gangs, some of them actual members of criminal gangs. “So let’s stop pretending that they are all refugees in distress. The whole country knows that is not true.’ Clare Moseley, from refugee charity Care4Calais said: ‘For Suella Braverman to use language like ‘invasion’, to describe refugees – people who are themselves escaping conflict – is offensive. They know what being invaded feels like. We are lucky that most of us do not.”Liberal Democrat Home Affairs spokesperson, Alistair Carmichael said the ‘scandal-ridden’ home secretary ‘has no credibility left’. ‘These refugees are not an invasion, they are people who want to build a life for themselves and their families, contribute to our society and our economy, and support themselves instead of relying on handouts.’ SNP MP Anne McLaughlin said she was ‘disgusted… to hear a home secretary deliberately use inflammatory language about vulnerable asylum seekers’ and that the remarks were ‘shameful’.Kim Johnson, the Labour MP for Liverpool Riverside, said: ‘One day after petrol bombs were thrown at the Dover immigration centre, Suella Braverman talks of “an invasion on the South coast”. ‘That is why racists and extremists feel emboldened to attack vulnerable asylum seekers. The Government needs to stop inflaming hate.’Another Labour MP Zarah Sultana said: ‘Language like this – portraying migrants as ‘invaders’ – whips-up hate & spreads division.’ Earlier a Tory MP accused the Home Office of a ‘deliberate’ decision to allow dangerous overcrowding at the Manston site. Ms Braverman was also forced to deny she had ‘blocked’ the use of hotel to ease the situation at the centre. Her predecessor Priti Patel insisted the problem had occurred under her successor’s watch, specifically highlighting the use of hotel rooms. ‘There was never any overcrowding when she was there. What would happen was, if it got to the point where people were getting worried about conditions, we would sign off on more hotels,’ a source close to Ms Patel said.The former home secretary considered it ‘the right thing to do’, the source told the PA news agency. David Normington, a former senior civil servant at the Home Office, said Ms Braverman may have breached the ministerial code, for the second time in a month, if she deliberately decided not to book hotels to address overcrowding.Earlier, the Conservative MP Roger Gale alleged that the conditions at Manston had been ‘deliberately’ caused by the Home Office, accusing his own government of ‘dog whistle politics’.