Rise in hotels used by asylum seekers, says minister

The number of hotels being used to house asylum seekers has risen by seven since the general election, the government has disclosed.

Home Office minister Dame Angela Eagle told MPs that 220 hotels were now in use, with 14 opened and seven closed since the July poll.

Conservative former cabinet minister Sir Gavin Williamson noted that, in its manifesto, Labour had pledged to end the use of hotels.

Dame Angela insisted the government remained “absolutely committed” to this, but had inherited an asylum system that had “ground to a standstill" because of the previous government’s policy of deporting some asylum seekers to Rwanda.

The policy was abandoned when Labour took office.

Dame Angela, the minister for asylum and border security, said the government was continuing to identify alternative accommodation.

While acknowledging that hotel use had increased since the election, she pointed out that it had previously peaked at over 400 hotels under the Conservatives.

She was responding to an urgent question from Sir Gavin about a hotel in his Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge constituency.

Given Labour's promise to end the practice of using hotels to house new arrivals, he said "you can imagine the devastation that so many constituents and constituents across the country are feeling when they’re seeing hotels being brought back into use”.

He also accused the Home Office of a “total lack of transparency”, saying local authorities were not being consulted. "It's a diktat that they receive with no support and no help," he added.

Sir Gavin said the number of people crossing the English Channel since Labour had come to power was 19% up on the same period last year.

Dame Angela attacked the Conservatives' record on asylum, particularly their claim that their Rwanda scheme was a deterrent.

"From the day it was announced to the day it was scrapped, 83,500 people crossed the channel in small boats. If that’s the definition of a deterrent then I thin he [Sir Gavin] needs to look it up on the dictionary,” she said.

She added that in the first six months of this year - when the Conservatives were still in office - there was an 18% increase in small boat crossings.

"Again, the Rwanda scheme was an expensive distraction," she told MPs.

Conservative shadow home secretary Chris Philp told MPs it came as "no surprise" that Labour was doing "the precise opposite of what they promised in their manifesto".

Dame Angela said Labour was making the asylum system "fit for purpose" after inheriting "an unholy mess" - where fewer than 1,000 cases a month were being processed.

"We are now processing up to 10,000 asylum cases a month."

She added: "We inherited two year-plus backlogs in the [asylum] tribunal system because they [the Conservatives] didn't fund them properly.

"We have in the last period returned nearly 10,000 people, which is a nearly 20% increase on the numbers that were returned last year.

The minister rejected a Liberal Democrat calls to scrap the ban on asylum seekers working if they have waited more than three months for a decision.

"If that restriction was to be lifted, I believe that would be a huge pull factor and it would have potentially serious consequences," she said.