CAMPAIGNERS are demanding that the Home Office come clean over the cost of Napier Barracks being used to house newly arrived asylum-seekers after ministers refused to disclose how much the government has spent on the squalid site. 

Ministers said that some £500,000 has been put into the site in Kent, where hundreds of refugees are being held, for improvements and recreational activities. 

But they declined to give a figure for the sums handed to contractors, on the grounds that such information is “commercially sensitive.” 

The refusal followed freedom of information requests by news agency PA Media. 

It also emerged that Home Secretary Priti Patel has never visited the former military facility. 

Campaigners said the public deserved to know the “price of this inhumanity.” 

Freedom From Torture senior policy adviser Sile Reynolds said: “At a time when the government should be investing in safe, dignified and humane housing for all people in the UK, it is wasting money on this hateful and divisive strategy.

“The public and the people who languish in the barracks deserve to know the price of this inhumanity. What does Priti Patel have to hide?”

A High Court ruling recently found that conditions at the site failed to meet minimum standards, residents had been falsely imprisoned and the Home Office had ignored public health advice. 

Despite this, the Home Office has continued using the site to house asylum-seekers. 

Napier Barracks is managed by privateer Clearsprings Ready Homes, which stands to gain an estimated £1 billion over the next 10 years from asylum-seeker housing contracts. 

The Labour Party said that it was “shocking” that the Home Office had refused to disclose the cost of the “sub-standard accommodation” and demanded the immediate release of the information. 

A Home Office spokesman said that “significant improvements” have been made to Napier Barracks, including an upgrade of the accommodation and the provision of more outdoor and recreational activities.