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Asylum accommodation centres
Tony Baldry continues to campaign both nationally and locally on the Home Office proposed Asylum Accommodation Centre at Bicester. Tony Baldry is working closely with organisations involved in the day-to-day welfare of asylum seekers - from the Refugee Service to the British Red Cross - to argue that the proposed centres are too large and rural.
Tony Baldry gave evidence to the Planning Enquiry on the accommodation centre at Bicester in February 2002 and is currently seeking a judicial review on the proposed centre at the High Court with CDC and Rushcliffe Borough Council.
Tony Baldry presented two petitions totalling 30,000 signatures to Parliament and the Home Office, and successfully amended the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 to allow for a judicial review application on an Independent Monitor of asylum centre size and location.
Latest News
Local MP denounces government stitch up on asylum accommodation centre
20 August 2003
North Oxfordshire MP, Tony Baldry, has denounced the Government's decision to build an Asylum Accommodation Centre at Bicester despite the independent Planning Inspector's report to the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister that no Accommodation Centre should be built at Bicester.
Tony Baldry said:
"This is utter hypocrisy on the part of the Government. The Planning Inspector's report unequivocally states 'no' to an asylum accommodation centre at Bicester. Yet contrary to a clear commitment to adhere to the Planning Inspector's advice the Government has chosen to ignore it."
"The Government has ignored the Planning Inspector's conclusions that the accommodation centre would put an additional burden on already stretched local public services, that the location of the accommodation centre could be dangerous, and that the proposed centre contradicts the Government's own planning guidance. It's clearly a stitch-up between two Government departments."
"The Government's determination to build a huge accommodation centre for 750 people stuck in the countryside is a completely friendless policy. Not a single organisation concerned with the welfare of refugees supports the government's policy. Now an independent Planning Inspector has told the Government that the proposed centre is unsuitable. The Government runs the risk of spending huge sums of taxpayers' money on building such accommodation centres, only to find that in the event they fail as if ever asylum seekers are placed there they simply drift away, not least out of boredom!"
"In the meantime, Cherwell District and Rushcliffe Borough Councils are pursuing judicial review proceedings against the Home Office on the Home Office's failure to appoint an Independent Monitor and to take advice from such a Monitor before deciding on the suitability of locations and clearly we will also have to wait and see what view the High Court comes to on that application."
"It is to be hoped that sooner rather than later the Home Secretary sees the sense of abandoning this ill thought-out and friendless proposal".
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