Mired in controversy, the Bibby Stockholm asylum barge is a “potential deathtrap”

Ben Selby, Assistant General Secretary of the FBU wrote to Suella Braverman, Home Secretary Aug 2nd, stating:

"Firefighting operations on vessels such as the Bibby Stockholm provide significant challenges and require specialist training and safe systems of work. The diminished safety provisions only exacerbate our operational concerns ... We are concerned about the risks of a large floating structure used to accommodate asylum seekers in long-term housing and would expect the risk assessment to recommend substantial prevention and control measures to tackle overcrowding, access to fire exits and other safety matters on the vessel. We have substantial expertise, including from earlier disasters such as the Grenfell Tower fire and the subsequent public inquiry. We are concerned above all to prevent another tragedy and to guarantee public safety."

Speaking to Sky News, Mr Selby added that the union's main concern was the plans to house over 500 people on a barge designed to accommodate about 200.

"That then raises significant fire safety concerns for us, and also concerns that, if a fire was to break out on the Bibby, could firefighters make the adequate rescues and access where necessary".

The Bibby Stockholm has 222 cabins along very narrow corridors and limited exits. It will hold more than double its original capacity, from 220 to 550 people, with bunkbeds replacing single beds. People will be tightly packed into shared tiny cabins with no privacy and little ability to move freely. Two asylum seekers will share cabins that previously could only accommodate one. The conditions are described as “oppressive”.   The evacuation point for those onboard is a compound on the quayside, which Dorset councillors have described as “completely inadequate”. Councillors who visited the barge last week were told there are no lifejackets onboard and have expressed concerns that locked gates could cause a crush in an emergency.

A report from the NGO One Life to Live has also raised concerns about fire safety and said that the barge could become a “floating Grenfell”.In addition, the people accommodated on the barge will likely have suffered trauma at sea, including the deaths of friends or family. Campaigners have called for clarity about whether land or maritime laws apply to various aspects of the scheme. The Home Office was asked on Tuesday morning who had legal responsibility for fire and other health and safety checks on the Bibby Stockholm but did not respond.

The Government has claimed they are using vessels to accommodate people based on previous schemes in countries like the Netherlands. However, human rights organisations across Europe have condemned immigration detention on ships as inhumane. Ex-detainees on asylum boats in Rotterdam undertook hunger strikes to highlight sub-standard health and other care and human rights abuses on boats. And an undercover journalist reported abysmal treatment of detainees after having worked there as an undercover security guard.

In February 2008, Algerian national Rachid Abdelsalam died onboard the Bibby Stockholm when the Netherlands used it to accommodate asylum seekers.  Fellow detainees had alerted prison guards about his gradually worsening condition but he was given flu medication. The guards then ignored fellow detainees when they pleaded for emergency assistance. The guards finally turned up at Rachid's cell door two hours after he died from heart failure. The news of his death only became public because detainees reached out in desperation to elected representatives, who then raised the issue in the Danish parliament.

On another vessel in the Netherlands, an ageing cruise ship called the Liberty Ann, a major Typhoid outbreak in 2022 infected 52 asylum seekers and 20 staff members who needed hospitalisation. Nearly 350 people in total were exposed to the potentially deadly bacteria. The outbreak was traced to raw sewage, which was allowed to mix with tanks of fresh water for drinking and cooking on the ship. The investigators discovered that fresh water and wastewater tanks on the ship shared a common wall which was severely corroded and peppered with small holes, leading to sewage contaminating the freshwater.

In May 2023, the Immigration Minister, Robert Jenrick, stated that asylum seekers would be housed in the 'most basic accommodation possible' and would meet the legal requirements to ensure people were not left 'destitute' but 'nothing more'. According to the Asylum Accommodation and Support Statement of Requirements (Schedule 2), General Accommodation requirements state that:  2.1.1 The Provider shall provide safe, habitable, fit-for-purpose and correctly equipped Accommodation in areas agreed with the Authority, including appropriate related services for those Service users. 

With the law requiring asylum accommodation to meet certain standards, Jenrick's statement exposes the hostility towards people seeking safety and the segregated refugee system that has taken hold in the UK. Whilst the Government introduced the 'Homes for Ukraine' scheme and encouraged the population to open their doors to white Ukrainians, people forced to come via boats from the Global South are treated with suspicion and placed into prison-like accommodation. 

In the 1980s, the Scarman enquiry correctly identified institutional racism, social exclusion and poor housing as driving factors behind the Brixton and Toxteth riots, and pushed for funds to improve opportunities and tackle inner city deprivation across the UK.

Similarly, refugees and immigrants have endured decades of impoverishment, alienation and dehumanisation by successive governments while immigration visa fees openly extort what little money they may earn to pay for “public sector pay rises”. 

Like the Rwanda policy, the barge policy will cost this country dear. That cost will be the long-term mental and physical health of asylum seekers who will be warehoused for months or possibly years on crumbling ships for the purposes of "political theatre". How are they meant to feel about their treatment at the hands of this country? And is this the right policy for a country with a rapidly ageing population with a declining birth rate?

The government asylum plan is inhumane and barbaric. This Home Secretary and the Government should be held accountable for the inevitable misery that unfolds next.

Robina Qureshi

Thanks to Diane Taylor (The Guardian), Corporate Watch, Statewatch and Migrants Right Network

Read also: ‘Floating prisons’: The 200-year old family business behind the Bibby Stockholm