Home Office forks out £6k Domino's bill to feed migrants arriving on British soil

8 October 2021, 13:38 | Updated: 8 October 2021, 14:45

The Home Office spent more than £6,000 on Domino's pizzas in July alone to feed migrants arriving in the UK after crossing the Channel from France, figures show.

The Dover branch of the chain sold hundreds of pizzas to the Home Office in July totalling £6,750.

The pizzas were provided while migrants were at Tug Haven, which is a short-term holding facility in Dover for migrants after they have been taken from the beach or sea.

The figures come from a disclosure log for the Home Office, and contained five separate orders.

The most expensive order, for £1,824, was logged with the comment: "This was an urgent need to feed a large number of migrants that had been on the Tug Haven compound in Dover for over 12 hours, and were likely to stay over 24 hours due to issues blocking their movement with resources and the Irc (immigration removal centre) estate."

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Meanwhile, an entry for £1,789 said: "Purchased by Clandestine Operational Response Team (Cort) for use at Tug Haven where we have migrants arriving on small boats.

"Due to the high number of migrants arriving and the length of time they had not eaten, it was agreed to purchase 200 pizzas."

The dates the pizzas were bought or the total number of pizzas bought was not disclosed.

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In the same one-month period other entries in the log show hundreds of pounds spent on tea, coffee and other refreshments. An additional £3,960 was spent on sunhat for staff and migrants, as well as £3,230 on blankets.

A Home Office spokesperson said: "We are committed to delivering the best value for money for the British taxpayer. We ensure all spending is carefully scrutinised to make sure that every pound of taxpayers’ money is spent in the most effective way."

The orders came in July, when at least 3,510 migrants arrived in the UK having crossed the Channel.

There were multiple days in which hundreds of migrants arrived as they took advantage of calm weather conditions. The highest number of migrants ever recorded on one day was 430 on July 19.

Since the start of the year, more than 17,000 migrants have succeeded in reaching the UK - double the figure for the whole of 2020.