MPs voted 309 to 113 against a motion condemning the MOD Bicester asylum plan. Banbury's MP voted against it; Bicester's MP opposed the plan but did not vote.
MPs have voted down a motion condemning the plan to house asylum seekers at MOD Bicester. The Commons rejected it by 309 votes to 113 on Wednesday 14 October. The plan itself is unchanged: it is still a planning application, and no decision has been made.
The motion was a Conservative Opposition Day motion. It did two things at once. It condemned “the Government’s plan to place illegal migrants in MoD Bicester”, and it called on the Government to leave the European Convention on Human Rights. That second clause is why the vote split the way it did. The full debate is in Hansard for 14 October, and every name is in the division record.
How the local MPs voted
| Constituency | MP | Vote |
|---|---|---|
| Banbury | Sean Woodcock (Labour) | Against the motion |
| Bicester and Woodstock | Calum Miller (Liberal Democrat) | Not recorded as voting |
| Mid Buckinghamshire | Greg Smith (Conservative) | For the motion |
| South Northamptonshire | Sarah Bool (Conservative) | For the motion |
Site A sits in Calum Miller’s constituency. No Liberal Democrat MP is recorded in either lobby. Sean Woodcock did not speak in the debate. Conservative MPs cast 101 of the 113 votes for the motion and Reform UK seven. Labour MPs cast 292 of the 309 votes against it.
What Bicester’s MP said
Calum Miller spoke against the scheme and against the motion. He told MPs the plan is “a portacabin village to house male asylum seekers” on “a derelict storage depot” rather than former military housing. He said he had opposed it from the start.
He also made three points about the site’s history and the process:
- in 2005 a planning inspector rejected a plan to house 750 asylum seekers on Site A, calling it isolated, unsuitable and unsafe;
- local residents worry about water, power, health services and policing;
- he asked the Government to pause the application and carry out a full environmental impact assessment, given a legal challenge by the campaign group Wrong Plan. Wrong Site.
He regretted that the Conservatives had tied the site to leaving the ECHR. “We could have united on this issue,” he said.
What the Government said
Anna Turley, the Minister for Border Security and Asylum, told MPs that “no final decision has been made”. She said the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government had taken views from the public as part of the planning process.
If the site goes ahead, she said, it would have:
- specialist security on site 24 hours a day;
- CCTV;
- a sign-in and sign-out system for everyone;
- joint working with the police, the council and local organisations.
Closing the debate, Home Office minister Jo White said Home Office officials had met Cherwell District Council’s chief executive and leader about concerns over the site. She said Natural England had raised no objections. She also said the final cost “will only be known following the outcome of the procurement process”.
A claim that does not match the record
Jo White told MPs that the planning process “already includes an environmental impact assessment”. The application’s own published documents say otherwise.
On 26 August the Planning Casework Unit, acting for the Secretary of State, issued a screening direction on the scheme. It found the development is “not likely to have significant effects on the environment”. It therefore directed that it is not “EIA development” under the 2017 regulations. That means no full environmental statement is required. The application does include narrower studies, among them a habitats regulations screening and an air quality screening note, listed on the Government’s application page.
Greg Smith, whose Mid Buckinghamshire seat borders the site, told MPs the Government had “ruled out doing an environmental impact assessment”. The screening direction supports his account rather than the minister’s. He also said campaigners had found rare bats and newts on the site. We have not seen a published survey that confirms this, and no Government document we can find sets a new timetable because of it.
What it means for you
- Nothing has been decided. The vote was on an opposition motion, not on the planning application. The Secretary of State still has to decide the urgent Crown development application for up to 1,256 bed spaces.
- The comment period has closed. Representations ran from 7 to 17 September.
- Cherwell District Council has already objected, along with two other councils. Our report on the three objections sets out their grounds, and Thames Valley Police’s cost estimate covers the £1.7m a year policing figure.
- To raise it with your MP, Bicester and the villages around Site A are in Bicester and Woodstock. Banbury and the north of the district are in Banbury.
We will report the decision when the Government publishes it.
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