CHILD asylum-seekers could be deported to Rwanda with their families, a Home Office minister admitted today.

Robert Jenrick confirmed that the government was considering deporting refugee families who arrive in Britain together to the African country. 

He told MPs on the women and equalities committee that leaving families out of the policy entailed a “range of risks.”

“I wouldn’t want to see a situation where adult males were deterred from coming to the UK as a result of the Rwanda policy, but the people-smugglers continued their operations with a particular focus on families,” he said. 

Mr Jenrick defended potential plans to send vulnerable families thousands of miles from Britain following questioning by the committee’s Tory chairwoman Caroline Nokes, saying that he believed it was a “perfectly valid consideration.”

He insisted: “We would not want to replace a trade in adult males with a trade in families.”

Earlier, the minister also admitted that asylum-seekers held at the Manston processing centre in Kent were still sleeping on gym mats on the floor. 

The site was the target of widespread outrage last year after it was revealed that thousands of asylum-seekers were being detained there in horrendous conditions, many for longer than the legal limit. 

The site was emptied in November after a former inmate died. It later emerged that he had tested positive for diphtheria. 

However, the site is now being used again to hold new arrivals while they undergo security and criminal record checks, with the Home Office recently changing the law to allow people to be detained there for 96 hours, up from 48 hours. 

Mr Jenrick insisted that there was now “much better quality accommodation” at Manston. 

Pressed by MPs on the sleeping arrangements, the minister conceded that the living conditions remain “relatively simple,” claiming that the Home Office had received advice that beds could cause a “fire risk.”

He defended the conditions at the site, claiming that the government was providing a “good service” to asylum-seekers — “commensurate if not better than most of our European neighbours.”

But SNP MSP Anum Qaisar told Mr Jenrick that it was “disgraceful” that families who had endured long and difficult journeys to this country had then been forced to sleep on the floor.