South Norfolk MP Richard Bacon has calculated that the money which the Home Office has written off after scrapping plans for ten asylum centres across the UK could have put more than 1,300 new police officers on the beat.
SOUTH NORFOLK MP Richard Bacon has said that the £30 million the government spent on an asylum centre than never opened could have been used to end the police pay dispute.
Mr Bacon said: “The Home Office says it can’t afford £30 million to settle the police pay dispute, but it was quite prepared to blow this amount on a half-baked asylum project that never got off the ground”.
“The proposed Bicester asylum centre was part of a £34 million project to house asylum seekers which collapsed before building work began, leaving a semi-derelict site”.
“Police officers have every right to be angry that money that could have funded their pay rise was frittered away on this dead-end plan”.
Mr Bacon was speaking as the Commons public accounts committee published its report on the cancellation of the Bicester asylum centre.
Between 2001–02 and 2005–06, the Home Office planned a purpose-built accommodation centre for asylum seekers at Bicester in Oxfordshire as part of a wider Home Office accommodation project for asylum seekers. However, falling numbers of asylum applicants, rising costs and an improvement in the processing of asylum applications led to the cancellation of the Bicester centre in June 2005. The Home Office spent £33.7 million on the accommodation project, including £29 million on the Bicester centre. The report finds that the Bicester scheme did not deliver any benefit to taxpayers, and that the expected costs of the centre had outweighed its intended benefits from the start.
Earlier this year, the Home Office decided against backdating an agreed 2.5 per cent pay rise for police in England, Wales and Northern Ireland to September, meaning the rise only amounts to 1.9 per cent. Funding the 2.5 per cent rise would cost £30 million.
12 June 2008
PAC REPORT: The cancellation of Bicester Accommodation Centre
PARLIAMENT: Asylum system is failing, says MP
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