Greg Smith

Indeed, we heard the Minister and Labour Back Benchers trying to say that this will be cheaper than hotels. Let me tell my hon. Friend and the House what the modelling actually says on the cost of MOD Bicester site A as an asylum camp. If that site persists for five years, the cost will work out at £235.34 per night. If it goes for 10 years, it will be £185.17 per night. The comparator for asylum hotels is £144 a night. The use of MOD Bicester site A is intrinsically incredibly more expensive than using hotels, so this does not offer value to the taxpayer as the Government and the Labour party want us to believe. That is an absolute nonsense that we cannot allow to persist. Of course, from a Government that like to talk about wanting to follow all the rules all the time and so on, they ruled out doing an environmental impact assessment, saying that it was not going to have much of an environmental impact. That is a statutory requirement that anyone wanting to build something should go through. They cannot argue that it will have a minimal environmental impact. There were munition stores on this site, and it is absolutely riddled with asbestos which will be released into the local environment. The wonderful campaign groups—not least “Wrong Plan. Wrong Site.”—have done an incredible amount of work, where they have found rare breeds of bats and newts. I know the Government like to pooh-pooh this, but in reality, the need to pay attention to and do these environmental impact assessments is set down in statute. It is the rules and the law we have, and for the Government to ride roughshod over that is purely unacceptable. I urge the Government to stop, to look at the cost, the environmental impact and the unsuitability of this site on practical grounds, and to withdraw it immediately so that the communities in my constituency, as well as those of our neighbours in Oxfordshire, can breathe once more and live in the peace that they deserve to live in, free from the fear that my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Joy Morrissey) set out in her opening speech, and that we can move on and stop this nonsense.