Home Secretary, Priti Patel, has been accused of having double standards over asylum seekers in her constituency in Essex and in Linton on Ouse near York.
Back in 2020 the Home office said the placing of asylum seekers at a hotel in Witham with 53 bedrooms in Priti Patel’s constituency was “an error” and guidelines were not followed.
Now they want to push ahead with housing 15 hundred men at the RAF base at Linton.
Olga Matthias, who lives near Linton, has told YorkMix Radio she can’t understand why there is a different approach to the issue in North Yorkshire to the one in Essex.
The Home Office said “Accommodation had been sought after an operational failure led to the migrants staying at Rivenhall Hotel in Witham.”
The statement was in response to a video shared by former UKIP leader Nigel Farage of him at the hotel.
Ms Matthias said: “There was an uproar and Priti Patel made sure that the decision to house asylum seekers in this hotel was reversed because they said that it was far too rural.
“So with a population of around 23,300, Witham is too rural to accept 53 asylum seekers but Linton-On-Ouse, with a population of 800, is not too rural to accept 1500.
“I think it’s quite astonishing that the government is even thinking of this kind of action. Where is the logic in that?”
In 2020 the Home Office told BBC Essex:
“We have a statutory obligation to provide asylum seekers who would otherwise be destitute with accommodation.
“But they should be placed in major conurbations wherever possible so that appropriate support and services can be more readily provided.”
The campaign to stop the plan to house me at the old RAF Base in Linton-on-Ouse continues and Conservative run Hambleton District Council is looking at taking legal action to stop it.
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