Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many incidents involving improvised weapons have been recorded at Manston Immigration Centre since February 2022; and what weapons were used in those incidents.

The Home Office has maintained readily retrievable records in electronic format for incidents of this kind at Manston since 2023. These incidents are rare.

One improvised weapon was detected in 2023 and one was detected in 2024. These weapons were found on entry to Manston, as part of our multi-layered approach to physical security, and seized. No weapons are known to have been improvised within Manston, and none are known to have been used there.

Incidents of this kind occurring at Manston before 2023 were subject to manual recording across multiple stakeholders and obtaining the requisite information for the period April to December 2022 could only be done at disproportionate cost.