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Harry Fletcher
Nov 04, 2022
Suella Braverman: Senior MPs put further pressure on home secretary to fix …
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Suella Braverman has been criticised online after taking a 20 mile journey by helicopter.
The home secretary arrived at the Manston immigration centre in a Chinook helicopter which costs £3,500 per hour to fly, according to the UK Defence Journal.
Downing Street defended the use of the military helicopter, saying Braverman had “travelled on a military aircraft to see the area of operations at sea”.
The Manston centre is only meant to hold 1,600 people, but around 4,000 asylum seekers were on the site over the weekend. Hundreds of refugees were forced to sleep on pieces of cardboard on plywood floors because there are no beds to accommodate them.
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The home secretary visited the Western Jet Foil site in Dover – which was hit by a firebomb attack last weekend – on Thursday morning, before visiting the town’s coast guard and heading to the immigration processing facility in Manston by helicopter.
It would have taken the home secretary around 40 minutes to travel from Dover to Manston by car, and the move has been criticised online.
\u201cThe Home Secretary arriving by military helicopter in war-torn <checks notes> Kent.\n\n67 miles from London. Takes 1h11m to get there by train, at a cost of \u00a311.30.\u201d— Mikey Smith (@Mikey Smith) 1667487589
\u201cHome Office refusing to provide any comment on why Suella Braverman appears to have used a Chinook helicopter to travel 20 miles between Dover and Manston this afternoon. It's a 30-minute journey by car.\u201d— Ben Kentish (@Ben Kentish) 1667491617
\u201cSuella Braverman got the RAF to fly her in a Chinook helicopter from Dover to the Manston refugee camp, a 30 minute drive.\u201d— RS Archer (@RS Archer) 1667492216
\u201cAccording to the UK defence journal a Chinook helicopter costs $4600 (\u00a33500) an hour to fly - quite an expensive photo-op!\u201d— Jon Stone (@Jon Stone) 1667487808
\u201c@jrmaidment Because it looks a lot more like an \u201cinvasion\u201d when you use a RAF helicopter\u201d— Jack Maidment (@Jack Maidment) 1667486742
\u201cFFS so cynical of Braverman to use a military helicopter to spin her \u201cinvasion\u201d inflammatory rhetoric.\n\nWhen did Britain\u2019s armed forces become props for a Conservative Home Secretary?\u201d— Kevin Maguire (@Kevin Maguire) 1667494651
\u201cApparently it cost us at least \u00a33500 for Braverman to take a chinook helicopter on 67 mile trip for a Performative militarisation photo op.\n\nA person in the asylum system would have to live for 600 days on that money.\u201d— Lou Calvey (@Lou Calvey) 1667498608
A No 10 spokesperson said: “The home secretary was in Dover to receive an update on operations on the ground. That obviously involved operations in the Channel. She travelled on a military aircraft to see the area of operations at sea.”
It comes as the home secretary continues to face pressure to resign. Braverman is embroiled in a number of scandals, including her lax approach to email security, and the language she uses when discussing migrants.
Braverman resigned from Liz Truss's government a couple of weeks ago after she said she sent a draft statement about immigration to her ally, the MP Sir John Hayes, for advice - and accidentally copied in a staffer in the MP Andrew Percy’s office - before she was reinstated by Rishi Sunak.
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