PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE
Asylum Seekers: Hotel Accommodation - 20 November 2024 (Commons/Commons Chamber)

(Urgent Question): To ask the Home Secretary if she will make a statement on the Government’s decision to recommence the use of hotels as accommodation for asylum seekers.

This Government inherited an asylum system under unprecedented strain, with many thousands stuck in a backlog without their asylum claims processed. The Home Secretary has taken immediate action to restart asylum processing and scrap the unworkable Rwanda policy, which will save an estimated £4 billion for the taxpayer over the next two years. We remain absolutely committed to ending the use of hotels for asylum seekers and continue to identify a range of accommodation options to minimise the use of hotels and ensure better use of public money, while maintaining sufficient accommodation to meet demand.

In accordance with the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999, the Home Office has a statutory obligation to provide destitute asylum seekers with accommodation and subsistence support while their application for asylum is being considered. We are committed to ensuring that destitute asylum seekers are housed in safe, secure and suitable accommodation and that they are treated with dignity while their asylum claim is considered. We continue to work closely with local authorities and key stakeholders, building on lessons learned in terms of asylum accommodation stand-up and management.

Hotels are not a permanent solution, but a necessary temporary step in keeping the system under control and ensuring it does not descend into chaos. We will restore order to the asylum system so it operates swiftly, firmly and fairly. As we progress with that, it is right that we deliver on our legal responsibilities and ensure people are not left destitute. Ultimately, we will be able to tackle irregular migration and bring the cost of the system down by billions of pounds. It remains our ambition to exit hotels; however, in the nearest future, they remain key to delivering on our legal responsibilities in ensuring people are not left destitute.

May I record my appreciation for securing this urgent question, Madam Deputy Speaker?

My constituents have had the devastating news that the Roman Way hotel is to be stood up to house asylum seekers. This was after it had been closed last year. Such a move has a significant impact not just on my constituents, but in Cannock more generally. We have seen 19,326 people cross the channel since Labour came to power, which is 19% up on the same period last year. This must be seen in the context of Labour’s manifesto pledge in July to end the use of hotels for asylum seekers.

Members can imagine the devastation that so many constituents across the country are feeling when they see these hotels being brought back into use, breaking one of Labour’s manifesto pledges. There is also a total lack of transparency. There is no consultation with local authorities. This is a diktat that those authorities receive, with no support and no help, and it is only news organisations such as GB News that are shining a light on it.

Will the Minister provide a list to the House of Commons, detailing all the hotels that have been stepped up to provide accommodation for asylum seekers since Labour came to power? And will she commit to continuing to update that list? What is the estimated cost of reopening these hotels? What has changed so drastically that has caused Labour to abandon a manifesto pledge so quickly? Considering that there is a correlation between the removal of a deterrent effect, which our party had put in place, and a rise in crossings, what will the Government do to provide a credible deterrent going forward? Finally, will the Minister commit to ceasing to use the Roman Way Hotel in my constituency, and will she also commit to not putting the Hatherton House hotel in Penkridge into use?

As a senior member of the last few Administrations, the right hon. Gentleman will know that we inherited an asylum system that had been ground to a standstill by the previous Government’s pursuit of the Rwanda policy, which was doomed to failure. They spent £700 million over two years to send four volunteers to Rwanda. Conservative Members claim that the Rwanda scheme was somehow a deterrent, but from the day that it was announced to the day that it was scrapped 83,500 people crossed the channel in small boats. If the right hon. Gentleman thinks that that is the definition of a deterrent, I think he needs to look it up in a dictionary. [Interruption.] The right hon. Member talks about a 19% increase in channel boat crossings since Labour came to power, but in the first six months of this year when the Rwanda scheme was up and running and apparently about to start at any minute, there was an 18% increase in channel crossings. Again, the Rwanda scheme was an expensive distraction, not a deterrent.

The right hon. Gentleman asks whether we will produce a list of hotels that are currently in use. He will know that, when he was in government, hotel use peaked at more than 400. I can tell him that, currently, there are 220 hotels in use. At the time of the election, there were 213 hotels in use, but since July seven hotels have shut and 14 have opened, which has created a net increase of seven.

I thank the right hon. Member for Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge (Sir Gavin Williamson) for securing this question. Under the previous Government, when the current shadow Home Secretary was in the Home Office, two hotels in my constituency were opened. There was no notification to the local authority and no consultation. This is another example of the Conservative party crying over the mess that they made and the attempt that this Government are making to clear it up. Does the Minister agree that we will smash the criminal gangs and stop those channel crossings, and that the carping from Conservative Members demonstrates that they have learned nothing since their election defeat?

I strongly agree with my hon. Friend: we inherited a system that was at a standstill. There was a backlog of 90,000 cases involving 116,000 people, and the law would not allow them to be processed. We have restarted processing. We are gearing up the asylum system, so that we can get throughput in the system, and ultimately exit the hotels and start using a more cost-effective system. I agree with my hon. Friend that the carping by Conservative Members, who created the backlogs and the mess that we are having to deal with, is a bit rich.

I call the shadow Secretary of State.

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge (Sir Gavin Williamson) on securing this urgent question. He is right to raise this issue. As he said, Labour promised in its manifesto to end the use of hotels, yet the Minister has just admitted at the Dispatch Box that, far from ending the use of hotels, the Government are in fact opening up even more. She has just admitted to 14. Perhaps it should come as no surprise now that, once again, Labour is doing the precise opposite to what it promised in its manifesto.

When the Conservatives were in government, they were in fact closing down hotels. Luckily, I have the figures in front of me. Between September last year and 30 June this year, the number of people in contingency accommodation, which is Home Office speak for hotels, went down by 47%—it went down—yet under this new Government it is going up. The Minister has told us how many hotels have opened up, will she tell us how many extra people are now in contingency accommodation, compared with 4 July? Will she also commit to always notifying Members of Parliament in advance—at least two weeks in advance—that a hotel will be opening in their constituency?

We all know the cause of this problem. It is the illegal and dangerous channel crossings. I am afraid the position has got even worse since the figures my right hon. Friend quoted were drawn up. Since the election, 19,988 people have crossed the channel. That is a 23% increase on the same period last year, and it is a 66% increase on the same period immediately before the election. Why have these numbers of people illegally crossing the channel gone up? The National Crime Agency has told us that we need a deterrent—that we cannot police our way out of this. Even Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, has said that European member states should look at offshore processing. We saw a deterrent system work in Australia, yet Labour scrapped the Rwanda deterrent before it had even started. The first flight had not taken off and that is why the deterrent effect had not commenced. Will the Minister follow Ursula von der Leyen’s advice? Will she emulate the Australians and reinstate the scheme?

That was quite a rant. It made certain assumptions that are completely untrue, including that the Rwanda scheme would have worked. We already know that it cost £700 million to send four volunteers to Rwanda. The Conservative party was planning to spend £175,000 per person sent to Rwanda, and it had not managed to send anyone to Rwanda. Had the Conservatives put aside the money, going into billions of pounds, to pay this £175,000 per person sent to Rwanda? No, they had not. No money was set aside. What we inherited was a system where no processing was going on—well, fewer than 1,000 asylum cases a month were being processed. We are now processing up to 10,000 asylum cases a month.

The right hon. Gentleman knows, because he was a Home Office Minister, that there are backlogs and lags between the first decision in processing and all the potential appeals. We cannot exit people from the asylum estate until they have a final decision. We inherited backlogs of more than two years in the tribunal system because the Conservatives did not fund it properly. In the last period, we have returned nearly 10,000 people, which is nearly a 20% increase on the numbers returned last year. We are working on making the asylum system fit for purpose. We inherited an unholy mess from the Conservatives.

I know that the Government understand that using hotels to house asylum seekers is bad for communities, for the taxpayer, and ultimately for those seeking asylum themselves. Conservative Members broke our asylum system and now wash their hands of the consequences. Will the Minister outline the progress that the Government are making on clearing the backlog that the Conservatives created, so that we can stand down hotels, including by prioritising the processing of those housed in the Cresta Court hotel in my constituency?

We are prioritising getting the system up and running again so that we can have throughput in our asylum accommodation estate. The fact that the system had ground to a complete halt when we came into government, with 90,000 unprocessed cases, has meant that there have been delays in getting it up and running. I explained to the House that we have gone from making 1,000 asylum decisions a month to 10,000. The system is beginning to get flow-through, and as that happens, we will exit from hotels. We have had to have a small increase. We have been in power four months. The manifesto did not say that we would end the use of hotels in four months. When the Conservatives were in power, more than 400 hotels were in use at its height, and they did not give any MP two weeks’ notice that those hotels were opening.

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

While an asylum seeker waits months or even years in a hotel for a decision on their claim, they are trapped in limbo. They are unable to work and are forced to depend on Government funds. That benefits no one—not the asylum seekers, who want to get on and start rebuilding their lives, and not taxpayers, who foot the bill. That is before I mention our local councils, which are left to pick up the pieces.

To end the use of hotels, tackling the backlog that ballooned on the previous Government’s watch must be part of the solution, but we can also reduce the demand for Government accommodation by allowing asylum seekers to support themselves and contribute to the economy—something that the Home Office has recognised will not act as a pull factor for asylum seekers. Will the Minister finally scrap the ban on asylum seekers working and paying their fair share as doctors or dentists if they have been waiting three months or longer for a decision on their claim? Will she commit to providing local councils with the resources that they need—both funding and clear guidance—to provide proper support for asylum seekers and the local communities hosting these hotels?

I do not agree that allowing asylum seekers to work while their claim is being considered will not be a pull factor. The way to deal with this issue is to have a fast, fair and efficient asylum system. We are looking at how we can redesign it, and at what we can do to deal with the huge backlogs that we inherited, not least in the tribunal system when there are appeals. We need a much better end-to-end system that is fair and efficient. That will mitigate any of the issues that the hon. Lady raises with respect to asylum seekers not being allowed to work. Were that restriction to be lifted, I believe that it would be a huge pull factor, which would have potentially serious consequences.

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge (Sir Gavin Williamson) on securing this urgent question on a matter that the Home Affairs Committee is looking at, but I am astonished that he wants to draw attention to the Conservatives’ legacy in this area. In 2019-20, the Home Office was spending £17,000 per asylum seeker per year on accommodation; by 2023-24, it was spending £47,000 per asylum seeker per year. At that point, it stopped taking decisions, so the number could only grow as the UK taxpayer paid for asylum seekers to stay in hotel accommodation. Does the Minister agree that the correct way to deal with the issue is to seriously address the systemic problems in the immigration system, such as the lack of any decisions being taken, and not ridiculous gimmicks such as wave machines and deterrents for four people?

I agree that it is about doing the day job effectively and efficiently, and if it cannot be done effectively and efficiently, redesigning it so that it can be, rather than having huge rows with the international community, threatening to leave the European convention on human rights, and setting up a parallel scheme that was not agreed by anybody, which spent vast amounts of money and ground the system to a halt. That is not the way to achieve success in this area. Considering the use of a wave machine to somehow send boats back to France just about sums up the reality of the Conservatives’ attitude to what is a difficult situation.

The Prime Minister has pledged to smash the gangs, and the Minister appears to be very confident in her position, so can she tell the House which metric we should use to judge whether the gangs have been smashed and the channel crossings ended, and by what date that will happen?

The Conservative party allowed—

Can you answer the question?

I will answer in my own way. The Conservative party allowed channel crossings to be industrialised. We are now facing a very sophisticated set of international supply chains that need international co-operation to be taken down and disrupted. We have established the border security command, we have announced the investment of £150 million, and we are getting 100 additional investigators to look at this matter. We managed to achieve a very significant arrest of an offender just the other week, which will begin to degrade the capacity of international organised criminal gangs to smuggle people on to our shores. The hon. Gentleman will see when the numbers start to go down, as will the rest of us.

The Minister has inherited an incredible mess. Reportedly, £3.6 billion of overseas aid will be spent on refugees and asylum seekers in this country this year, but simply ending the use of hotels will not solve some of the problems that the system is causing in our communities. A lot of the private providers of asylum accommodation buy up properties in the most deprived parts of cities. I think that the Government’s biggest challenge is to rebuild trust with the public. I ask her to consider the difference between the Homes for Ukraine system of housing people and the system of allowing big corporates and profiteering companies to house asylum seekers, and to think about how we involve civil society and our communities in the way we respond to the needs of asylum seekers.

My hon. Friend will be comforted to know that I am thinking of precisely those things.

I do not envy the hon. Lady in her job. Does she agree that no amount of hotel accommodation will ever suffice as long as there is no effective way of preventing large numbers of people from coming into this country without permission? As a form of interception near the French coast will probably be the only deterrent, will she at least keep open the possibility of negotiations with France as to how we could work together to do that?

We have a relatively new Government in France just bedding in. I reassure the right hon. Gentleman that we are working closely with them to see how we can strengthen and deepen our co-operation and partnership.

The right hon. Member for Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge (Sir Gavin Williamson) who raised the urgent question appears to be suffering from some memory loss. Under the Conservative Government, we saw 130,000 small boat crossings and record backlogs at the Home Office. The Conservatives opened 400 hotels—that is, 21,000 places costing £8 million per day to the taxpayer. Does the Minister recall him raising that issue under the previous Government?

No, I do not. I noticed the revelations at the weekend about why the Conservatives decided to call the election earlier than some of us had perhaps thought. One reason set out in Tim Shipman’s book “Out” was that illegal migration was a problem,

“with a new armada of small boats predicted and the issue of whether they would be able to get a repatriation flight to Rwanda in the air before polling day.”

They evidently decided that they could not. We are now hearing this complete fiction from Conservative Members that somehow the Rwanda scheme was just about to work before we scrapped it, when they had spent £700 million on an increasingly futile and ridiculous attempt to get the scheme off the ground.

Here we go again with this new Labour Government simply copying and aping the failed and disastrous policies of the Conservative Government on hotel accommodation, while engaging in this grotesque competition to see who can sound the hardest on asylum seekers. Why not be bold and imaginative? Many of these asylum seekers are highly educated, with skills that could be deployed in communities up and down the United Kingdom. The ridiculous answer that the Minister gave to the Liberal Democrats about the UK being a pull to asylum seekers is simply nonsense, and she knows that with the tens of thousands coming to our shores right now. Why not get them usefully employed instead of leaving them to rot in hotels across the UK?

We certainly want those who gain status to be usefully employed, and my part of the system is ensuring that we get those asylum decisions up and running as fast as possible. Unfortunately, we have inherited a difficult situation, which we are working hard to resolve. Once someone has gained status in this country, of course they are able to work, so we have to get the system working faster.

In my constituency, two hotels were opened under the previous Conservative Government, and they are still there, so I find the new concern from Conservative Members slightly disconcerting. Although I accept what the hon. Member for West Suffolk (Nick Timothy) says about this now being the Labour Government’s problem, I am certain that Conservative Members do not want to publicly defend their appalling legacy, wo need a little less from them. The question I put to the Minister—[Interruption.] That is how it works here: we ask a question and wait for the answer. [Interruption.] The shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp), can keep quiet.

Schools in my constituency say that accessing children in those hotels for educational welfare visits or safeguarding checks is proving more and more difficult because the providers do not understand their responsibilities. I encourage the Minister to speak to her counterparts in the Department for Education and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to ensure that those necessary checks to keep children safe can be done unimpeded.

Since we came into government, we have done much more to co-operate across Departments, and I will certainly take that issue up with my opposite numbers in the Department for Education and MHCLG.

Two hotels in my constituency of East Londonderry are being used, and we have problems enough trying to provide good-quality hotels, with Royal Portrush coming up next year. We need to see a gradual, continuous reduction in hotel accommodation being used for this purpose. Will the Minister address that and try to show some sense of direction on when that will be achieved?

We are processing asylum claims, which were at a standstill when we came into government, not least those that are extant in Northern Ireland. I hope that will lead to a process where we get throughput in the system and we begin to exit hotels.

I welcome the Minister’s informing the House that return figures are now at nearly 10,000, which is up 1,000 from last week. May I ask on behalf of my constituents how we can make returns even faster?

For the integrity of any asylum system, it is important that a person who is not granted asylum recognises that they do not have the right to stay in the country. Hopefully they will leave voluntarily; if not, they will be removed. Immigration enforcement, which operates out of the Home Office, is focused on increasing total returns. As I said, they are up 19% on the same period last year, and we intend to double down and carry on.

In Boston and Skegness, we want the use of hotels by asylum seekers to stop, as is the case across the country. Under the previous Labour Government 20 years ago, processes and applications were dealt with within three to four weeks, including appeals, and only about 20% of applications were granted asylum. When will the Minister and the Home Office get back to the sensible workmanlike processes that worked 20 year ago?

We are working on it, but, as the hon. Gentleman knows, we have inherited a huge mess with large backlogs that are not easy to clear.

I associate myself with the comments of the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice), who has eloquently described how it used to work under the previous Labour Government. In fact, on the last day of 2010, the number of people on an asylum waiting list was around 14,000. In June this year, the asylum caseload was 224,000. That is 16 times higher. The brass neck, frankly, of Conservative Members to come here and criticise us is genuinely breathtaking. Given that we have gotten three of the largest deportation flights in British history off the ground in four months, does the Minister agree that although there is far more to do, the plan is working?

Yes, but it is tough and difficult, and to be successful, it requires international co-operation across borders operationally, politically and diplomatically, and we are doing that.

Our manifesto commitment was not to close all asylum hotels within four months of being elected.

It is truly astonishing to hear the Conservatives come here today to defend their Rwanda policy—£700 million spent on four deportees, or £175 million each. They could have purchased a five-star hotel for each of them. Surely the Minister agrees that the money is far better spent on intelligence, enforcement and, of course, processing, to get the backlog that we inherited down.

I certainly do agree.

I am sure that the vast majority of Members accept that the new Government have inherited a complete and utter shambles of an asylum system, and are having to clear up another area of Tory mess. Part of that clearing up will involve sorting out and processing asylum applications promptly, so will the Minister give us more insight on how she is doing that? My area had asylum hotels imposed upon it by the last Conservative Government. How will the Government avoid principal holiday accommodation areas taking further such hotels?

We certainly are having to get the system back up and running from a virtual standing start, as the hon. Gentleman rightly points out. That means that we have been able, as I said, to go up from processing only 1,000 asylum claims a month to nearly 10,000 a month. Those who have gone through the whole system and have received a grant, for example, need then to exit our asylum accommodation. That allows us to backfill and, in the end, to exit hotels. However, that is not an instant solution; the system has ground to a halt and we must redeploy resource to get it up and running again.

It is worth remembering that when this Government came into office, we were in the middle of the worst year ever for small boat crossings —the number of crossings was 6% higher than in 2022, the previous record year. That, I am afraid, was the legacy of chaos and failure that the Conservative party left behind. There is still a long way to go in tackling the crossings, but does the Minister welcome the fact that, so far, total arrivals this year are 20% down on 2022?

I welcome any progress, but I also recognise the seasonality of arrivals. Unlike the last Government, I am not here to tell the House that there are any quick or easy solutions to this difficult problem. We are getting the system up and running, we have created the border security command to start disrupting and degrading the gangs that are smuggling people across the channel, and we will assert the right of the rule of law to exist, and get our asylum system working, so that we can stop those dangerous crossings.

However, I cannot stand here and say that a magic wand that can easily be waved. It will take hard cross-jurisdictional and cross-country work, and that is what the border security commander has been appointed to do. That is what the extra £150 million of resource given to that job is there to do. That is what our operational and National Crime Agency people are there to do and are doing.

We have heard today that more than 19,000 illegals have come in on small boats since the Government came into office. Does the Minister have any figures on the influx in the United Kingdom of illegals and others from the Republic of Ireland, where there are no checks? On the question of hotels, how can my constituents judge her party’s manifesto pledge to reduce the number of hotels? To help them do that, will she undertake to publish, on a monthly or bi-monthly basis, the number of hotels in use in each constituency and the number of illegals accommodated in them?

No. The previous Government did not do that either, for safeguarding and public safety reasons, as the hon. Gentleman knows.

It is rather galling for the right hon. Member for Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge (Sir Gavin Williamson) to protest about a hotel in his constituency being used. That is clearly the result of a backlog created by the Conservatives when in government, as they wasted hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money on gimmicks that they knew would never work. Surely my hon. Friend agrees that the right answer is better and faster processing. That is fairer for those seeking asylum, fairer for those in communities where hotels are being used for asylum accommodation, and fairer for the taxpayer.

I agree. Of course, the right hon. Member for Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge (Sir Gavin Williamson) knows only too well that the same hotel was open from 21 November 2022 to 8 February 2024, and he did not complain about it in the House then.

Will the Minister outline the safety procedures in place to ensure that there is additional community policing in the areas around the hotels, as literally hundreds of single men are descending on small hotels and communities? That is a safety issue, and all our constituents across this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland deserve to have that reassurance.

There is a safeguarding and safety issue going in both directions. I see reports of asylum seeker service users being attacked and injured, as well as of attacks in the other direction in a small number of cases. We always liaise with the local police and local authorities. We take an intelligence-led approach to see whether there is outside agitation or difficulty, and we are in constant contact with local services and our service providers to ensure the safety of service users and local populations.

I thank the Minister for her statement, and I am responding to it in the context of my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I can only agree with her on Rwanda. Not only was that scheme an inhumane shambles, but it has brought shame and ridicule to our country, and I am glad to see the back of it. I welcome her commitment to bringing dignity and respect to the immigration system, and her acceptance that the way in which the hotels have been operated is a big part of that.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s recent “Destitution by Design” report, which was authored by Professor Beth Watts-Cobbe, a researcher at the Institute for Social Policy, Housing, Equalities Research in my constituency, makes absolutely clear the human impact of the so-called hostile immigration policy operated by the previous Government on real people in our country. Is the Minister aware of that report, and if not, will she commit herself or one of her staff to speaking to Professor Watts-Cobbe about its findings?

I am happy to check out the report, and I will write to my hon. Friend.

I am grateful to the Minister for coming to the House to set out the Government’s measures to deal with this issue. I share my colleagues’ amazement about the new-found concern of Conservative Members—[Interruption.] I am not sure why the right hon. Member for Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge (Sir Gavin Williamson) is heckling. This time last year, under the Conservative Government, we had more than 400 hotels and more than 21,000 hotel rooms in use for asylum seekers, and we were spending £8 million a day on hotels. Does the Minister agree that although the Conservatives were apparently happy with that, this Labour Government are not, and we are taking steps to deal with their mess?

I thank my hon. Friend for his observations. Clearly, we begin from the situation that we found when we came into office. In this case, the system was in chaos, with a Rwanda scheme that was an unworkable and massively expensive distraction, which meant that no processing of any of the asylum claims made from March 2023 was happening. We have a huge backlog. We have had to switch the system, and divert resources from a failed Rwanda scheme into processing and the border security command, so that we can deal with the causes of the problem, rather than pretending that it does not exist.