Migrants could return to the Bibby Stockholm barge within days following a Legionella scare, a government minister has suggested.
Will Quince, the health minister, said officials would ensure the barge was safe before any asylum seekers returned to it.
His comments come after 39 people were evacuated from the vessel, in Portland, Dorset, last week after tests results showed traces of the potentially dangerous bacteria in the barge’s water system.
The evacuation took place just days after the first migrants boarded the controversial barge, which is designed to accommodate 500 people.
“Of course public health and safety is key, but we hope in the next few days we will be able to start getting people on to the Bibby Stockholm,” Mr Quince told LBC Radio.
“It is absolutely the right thing to do but public health and safety is always our paramount concern.”
The first migrants being housed on the barge entered the vessel on 7 August – the same day the Legionella was discovered – and remained onboard for several days, sparking a major row over the government response.
Dorset Council said it informed the contractors responsible for the barge – and employed by the Home Office – of the test results on the same day.
But the Home Office said it was not formally made aware of the results until 9 August and ministers insisted they were not told until the following day.
The fiasco prompted one former Tory minister to call for home secretary Suella Braverman to be sacked for “losing control” of the Channel crisis, while another joked: “Is the government cursed?”
“What an end to small boats week,” a former Conservative minister said. “It’s obvious to all that the home secretary has lost all control and authority on the issue of illegal migration.”
The former minister added: “She is responsible for this crisis and should be held to account for her irresponsible actions that have brought disease to these sites and now threaten the public health of the local community.
“She should be sacked. She has turned the migrant crisis into a Carry On show.”
Conservative MP Scott Benton called the situation a “complete and utter farce”, writing on Twitter: “As if having porous borders isn’t bad enough, we can’t even move 39 illegal immigrants onto a barge properly.”
Labour also sought to make political hay out of the incident, with Stephen Kinnock, the shadow immigration minister, claiming the “Tories’ asylum chaos is going from bad to worse.”
The assistant general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union, Ben Selby, said wider safety concerns over the vessel remained, with more than a week having passed since the union asked for a meeting with Ms Braverman.
But No 10 defended the government’s handling of the incident and insisted that barge remains an “appropriate way to find alternative accommodation to hotels”, despite condemnation from opposition parties, refugee charities and medical groups.
“We will be communicating with all relevant groups to see if there are any lessons that can be learned, as you would expect in any public health situation,” a No 10 spokesperson said.
“We remain confident that we have acted quickly once informed.”
In a separate interview with Sky News on Tuesday morning, Mr Quince said the Home Office and their contractors – Corporate Travel Management [CTM] and Landry and Kling – would examine why migrants remained onboard the barge for several days after the Legionella bacteria was discovered.
Mr Quince said the Home Office was on top of the issue, telling Sky News: “It is important we should always prioritise public health, that is without question.
“But that is now being addressed and I hope that we will be able to, in the coming days, address that issue and then people will be able to embark back on to the Bibby Stockholm.”
Following claims the Home Office was informed days before ministers were told about the issue, Mr Quince said: “No doubt the Home Office, alongside their contractors, will want to look at the timeline of that.
“But what I do know, as soon as ministers were made aware an immediate decision to disembark was made on public health grounds. “I know that there won’t be anyone going on to the Bibby Stockholm until it’s totally safe.”