Bibby Stockholm: Asylum seeker barge docks in Portland as migration bill progresses

A barge that volition location asylum seekers nether authorities plans to chopped the outgo of lodging has docked successful a Dorset port.

Bibby Stockholm berthed successful Portland Port connected Tuesday and volition enactment astatine the tract for 18 months, becoming location to 500 azygous men claiming asylum.

It was met with protests from section residents and quality rights groups.

The vessel's accomplishment came hours aft the government's Illegal Migration Bill cleared cardinal hurdles successful the House of Lords and is acceptable to go law.

The measure would outlaw asylum claims by each arrivals via the Channel and different "illegal" routes, and transportation them to 3rd countries, similar Rwanda.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has made cracking down connected amerciable migration a precedence up of adjacent year's wide election.

Many section residents connected Portland fearfulness an influx of hundreds of radical into the land assemblage volition enactment unit connected section services. Human rights groups person branded the barge "inhumane".

But the Home Office said utilizing vessels arsenic alternate accommodation for asylum seekers would beryllium cheaper than hotels and amended worth for British taxpayers.

While opponents person criticised the conditions successful which residents volition live, the authorities says the barge volition beryllium basal but functional, and meets each the applicable information standards.

It said determination were presently astir 51,000 asylum seekers successful hotels crossed the UK, costing the payer astir £6m a day.

The 222-room, three-storey barge volition location big males, aged from 18 to 65, who are successful the second stages of their asylum applications.

Dozens of protestors gathered extracurricular Portland Port from dawn connected Tuesday, waiting for the Bibby Stockholm to marque its last manoeuvre into the port.

One of them told the BBC the woody betwixt Portland Port and the Home Office to dock the barge successful the Dorset larboard was "nothing to bash astir thing different than money".

"They are audaciously negligent," the protestor said, adding: "Audacious - due to the fact that they person done this woody without immoderate consultation oregon immoderate thought of immoderate imaginable fallout."

Many section residents said they had not been consulted and voiced choler implicit however the determination was taken.

Other organisations, specified arsenic Stand Up to Racism, besides joined Tuesday's protests, describing the determination to location 500 men connected a barge arsenic "inhumane".

The archetypal 50 asylum seekers are expected to spell aboard successful the adjacent fewer days, portion the barge is acceptable to scope its afloat capableness successful the coming weeks.

The asylum seekers are expected to unrecorded connected the vas for astir 3 to six months portion their claims are dealt with. They volition not beryllium officially detained and determination volition beryllium nary curfew.

While the authorities says it needs to trim the outgo of lodging asylum seekers, shadiness location caput Labour Yvette Cooper has described the usage of barges arsenic "a motion of the Conservatives' full nonaccomplishment to wide the asylum backlog".

The Conservative MP for Dorset South, Richard Drax, said helium had "a batch of sympathy with the government" arsenic migrants proceed to transverse the English Channel.

"But putting them connected a barge is not the answer,"he added.

Bibby Stockholm was antecedently utilized to location stateless radical and asylum seekers successful Germany and the Netherlands. It has been refurbished since it was criticised arsenic an "oppressive environment" erstwhile the Dutch authorities utilized it.

The vas present has en-suite rooms, a TV and games country and a gym, according to a information expanse from its owner, Bibby Maritime.

Portland Port antecedently said providing berthing abstraction for the barge was "the close happening to do".

It added the program would let Dorset to "play its portion successful the nationalist effort to location immoderate of the thousands of asylum seekers needing accommodation".

It stressed it had provided a scope of accusation for section people, councils and groups, but said it had been incapable to disclose accusation earlier owed to the confidential quality of negotiations with the government.

The Home Office said its plans for "alternative accommodation" - which besides see erstwhile subject bases - was intelligibly cheaper than the £6m regular outgo of putting 51,000 asylum seekers successful hotels.

However, the afloat costs of the barge person not been disclosed, with exile run radical Reclaim The Sea claiming the Bibby Stockholm would cost much than hotels.

The Home Office said it would "continue to enactment highly intimately with section councils and cardinal partners to hole for accomplishment of asylum seekers aboriginal this period and minimise disruption for section residents including done important fiscal support".

Dorset Council volition person £1.7m implicit the duration of the vessel's enactment successful the port.