Linton-on-Ouse site 'completely wrong' for asylum seeker camp Badenoch says
Kemi Badenoch has said a plan to house up to 1,200 asylum seekers on a former RAF base in Linton-on-Ouse would create crime and policing problems, because it is ‘completely the wrong site’.
Speaking to the Yorkshire Post while on a visit to North Yorkshire yesterday, she said the plan was ‘absolutely not OK’.
The site was first identified under Boris Johnson’s Government in 2022, but then plans were shelved while Rishi Sunak was Prime Minister.
Now, the Government has said it is applying for planning permission for the site, as well as two others in Oxfordshire and Suffolk, to house up to 3,750 asylum seekers.
They say it is necessary to help close asylum hotels, but critics, including the Conservative leader of North Yorkshire Council are strongly opposed to the plan.
Yesterday, the Leader of the Opposition Mrs Badenoch said: “It is a very small village, I think it's only got about 600 people and then to just plonk so many unidentified young males in such a place I think would be absolutely the wrong thing to do.
“There's no infrastructure to support it, and my experience as an Essex MP has been that many of these people create problems.
“We had that horrific scandal in Epping with a young girl being sexually assaulted.
“What we need to do now is stop the boats and stop more and more people like this from coming to our country. We need to detain and deport.
“That is our policy as conservatives. We have a plan to do so, it does involve leaving the European Court of Human Rights.
“We had a Rwanda plan which labour scrapped, but they didn't have anything else in place, and it’s just made the problem so much worse.”
When asked whether part of the blame for the site being considered was down to her party putting the idea forward in the first place, Mrs Badenoch said: “Well, that's not strictly true. Things are considered, but the fact is Rishi Sunak said no to that site.
“There will always be things that come up for consideration and then you say yes or no depending on suitability.
“And we said no, and that is what the government should do again. This is not the right place for that asylum camp, it's absolutely not.”
On the issue of where asylum seekers should be placed, if the Linton-on-Ouse scheme does not go ahead, Mrs Badenoch said: “Well, this is the thing that I've been saying, that the problem is getting worse.
“We're getting more and more people. If we stop the problem at source, then the rest of it goes away.
“There are better sites, there are more suitable sites, but simply plunking people in the middle of a rural village where there's not that much policing, there's not that much infrastructure, there's nothing for those people to do.
“You can't keep them on site there. They're not in detention. They can walk around and go about as well as they please.
“There is so much trust in our system. And I think we need to bring back some common sense and just stop pretending it'll be fine.
“Yes, it is true that they do need to go somewhere, but the bottom line is that they need to go back home, not here.”