HOME Secretary Suella Braverman “deliberately” allowed conditions at the Manston asylum processing centre to deteriorate to the point where they broke the law, a Tory MP has claimed. 

Sir Roger Gale has tabled an urgent question in Parliament demanding a government minister explain their “car crash” decisions which have resulted in overcrowding and potentially illegal detention at the government site in Kent.

Migrants sent to Manston are meant to be processed and moved on within 24 hours. 

It has the capacity to deal with 1,600 people, but last night, 4,000 were being housed there. 

Some, including families with children, have been there for four weeks. 

There are reports of people contracting diseases like diphtheria, scabies and MSRA. Staff have also recorded outbreaks of violence as tensions mount due to the overcrowding.

Over the weekend, it emerged that the Home Secretary had been warned weeks ago that migrants were being detained for unlawfully long periods at Manston.

She had been told that the situation could lead to a public enquiry and that government would almost certainly lose any legal challenge. 

Ms Braverman is said to have refused to sign off on paying for more hotels for the asylum seekers to be transferred to.

A government source said: “When they get there, people are supposed to be processed and then released. They have their biometrics taken and should be sent to accommodation paid for by the Home Office, which means a hotel, or they are granted immigration bail.

“They can only hold someone if there is a reasonable prospect of their removal from the country in a sensible timeframe.

“She was refusing to sign off on bail or pay for hotels which means she was illegally detaining people.

"There is no legal grounds for them to be detained.

"Officials have been put in an impossible position because they can’t release people without Suella releasing the money. This has been going on for more than three weeks.”

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Sir Roger, whose constituency houses the centre, said: “There are simply far too many people and this situation should never have been allowed to develop, and I’m not sure that it hasn’t almost been developed deliberately.”

He added: “I was told the Home Office was finding it very difficult to secure hotel accommodation. I now understand this was a policy issue and that a decision was taken not to book additional hotel space.

“That’s like driving a car down a motorway seeing the motorway clear ahead. Then there’s a car crash and then suddenly there’s a five-mile tailback. The car crash was the decision not to book more hotels space.”

Ms Braverman - who is already under pressure for sending a colleague a sensitive government document from her personal email - could be in breach of the ministerial code for allowing the situation at Manston to deteriorate, as it states that she has an “overarching duty” to “comply with the law”

Asked if Ms Braverman was the right person to handle this situation, Sir Roger said: “I’m not seeking to point fingers at the moment but I do believe whoever is responsible – and that is either the previous home secretary or this one – has to be held to account. Because a bad decision was taken and it’s led to what I would regard as a breach of humane conditions.

Immigration minister Robert Jenrick visited Manston on Sunday. In a post on Twitter, he migrants continue to be processed “securely” in “challenging conditions”, adding: “I was hugely impressed by the staff I met, managing this intolerable situation.”

Some 468 people arrived in the UK on Sunday after crossing the Channel in eight boats, the Ministry of Defence said, taking the provisional total for the year so far to 39,864.

Around 700 people were moved to Manston over the weekend after incendiary devices were thrown at a migrant processing centre in Dover.

A Reuters photographer said a man threw petrol bombs with fireworks attached before killing himself. The news agency reported the attacker was described as a white man wearing a striped top, who drove up to the centre in a white Seat 4×4 vehicle.

Ms Braverman was forced to quit as Home Secretary under Liz Truss after she emailed a potentially market-sensitive draft written ministerial statement to veteran backbench Tory Sir John Hayes, a fellow right-winger, from a personal email account.

She accidentally also sent it to the staff member of another Tory MP. 

Despite previously claiming she had admitted the mistake to the then prime minister as soon as was possible, an email over the weekend showed she had, in fact, asked the staff member to delete the email and not say anything to anyone. 

Labour's Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said full details needed to be set out to MPs.

She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “There is a blunt immediate question, which is how many other security breaches have there been? How many other security lapses has she been involved in? And that’s the most important question.”