Just four days after asylum seekers were sent by Britain’s government to a barge moored off the coast, the vessel was being evacuated on Friday after bacteria that can cause Legionnaires’ disease were found in its water system.
The development is another setback for the Conservative government, which has pursued an increasingly hard-line policy on migration, including seeking more basic accommodation for those who arrive in Britain from France on small boats seeking refugee status.
The government says the policy is designed to cut the cost of housing 51,000 asylum seekers in hotels, which it estimates at 6 million pounds — about $7.6 million — a day. Critics say the use of the barge is a populist move designed to appeal to right-wing voters ahead of a likely election next year.
The vessel, called the Bibby Stockholm, is moored at Portland Port in Dorset, on England’s southern coast, and accepted its first 15 residents on Monday. By Friday, 39 asylum seekers were onboard.
In a statement, the Home Office, the government department responsible for migration, said that “samples from the water system on the Bibby Stockholm have shown levels of Legionella bacteria which require further investigation.”
All those who arrived on the barge this week were being disembarked as “a precautionary measure,” it said, “while further assessments are undertaken.”
The Home Office said that no individuals on board had presented with symptoms of Legionnaires’ disease — the sometimes fatal respiratory condition that can be caused by Legionella bacteria — and that asylum seekers were being provided with appropriate advice and support.
But Care4Calais, a charity that supports refugees, said that as of Friday afternoon three men remained on the Bibby Stockholm. “No one has told them anything about the Legionella outbreak and they are frantically trying to find staff on board. It’s been left to our caseworkers to tell them to avoid the water,” the charity said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
The Home Office said that contaminated samples came from water found on the vessel’s internal systems and carried no direct risk for the wider community of Portland.
The discovery will raise further concerns about the public health risks of housing large numbers of asylum seekers on a barge.
When some asylum seekers refused to move to the barge earlier this week, a home office minister, Robert Jenrick, insisted that it was “perfectly decent accommodation,” that had been used by other nations in a similar way.
In fact, the transfer of asylum seekers to the Bibby Stockholm was held up for several weeks because of fears over fire safety. Even after the essential checks were carried out, the Fire Brigades Union, which represents rank-and-file firefighters, said barges were “a potential deathtrap,” and described the policy as “cruel and reckless.”
Part of the concern has focused on the number of people who might be brought aboard. The barge has 222 rooms but asylum seekers faced having to share, and as many as 500 could ultimately be accommodated there.
The government’s flagship migration policy — flying some asylum seekers to Rwanda before their cases are assessed — is currently blocked by a legal judgment that the government is appealing. The embarrassment of having to evacuate the Bibby Stockholm just days after it became operational is another unwelcome development for the government, which has trumpeted its hard-line approach as a way to deter the flow of people crossing from France on small, often unseaworthy, boats.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has declared stopping small boats to be one of his top priorities, and the government had identified this week as “small boats week” when it would emphasize its policies to curb the number of arrivals.
Crossings have continued, however, with little sign that the new measures are deterring them. Indeed the statistics passed a symbolic threshold on Wednesday, when the total number of migrants to have made the journey since 2018 passed 100,000.
Yvette Cooper, who speaks for the opposition Labour Party on home affairs issues, said in a statement that “the Conservatives have slogans and gimmicks, but no real solutions and no grip — and even their campaign weeks disintegrate into total chaos.”
