Immigration minister says 50 hotels to be returned to normal use by February due to decline in small boat crossings
Immigration minister Robert Jenrick announced in the House of Commons on Tuesday that the use of hotels to house asylum seekers will be scaled back, starting with 50 hotels currently used as asylum accommodation that will be exited and returned to their normal use by February 2024.
Image credit: UK GovernmentJenrick said: "I can inform the House that today the Home Office wrote to local authorities and Members of Parliament to inform them that we will now be exiting the first asylum hotels—hotels in all four nations of the United Kingdom. The first 50 exits will begin in the coming days and will be complete by the end of January, with more tranches to follow shortly. But we will not stop there: we will continue to deliver on our strategy to stop the boats, and we will be able to exit more hotels. As we exit those hotels, we are putting in place dedicated resources to facilitate the orderly and effective management of the process and limit the impact on local communities."
A Home Office press release provides more information and says asylum seekers currently accommodated in the 50 hotels will be moving to other parts of the UK's asylum estate, with the press release mentioning the former military base at Wethersfield and the Bibby Stockholm barge.
Jenrick said the move to exit the hotels is due to a drop in the number of people crossing the English Channel by small boat. He told the Commons: "For the first time since the phenomenon of small boat arrivals began four years ago, they are down by more than a fifth in comparison with those in the equivalent period in 2022, and in recent months we have seen still further falls—and let me dispel the myth peddled by some of our increasingly desperate opponents that that is because of the weather. The weather conditions this year were more favourable to small boat crossings than those in 2022, but we have still seen a marked decrease."
Jenrick added that removals were up, highlighting large numbers of returns to Albania: "The number of removals of those with no right to be in the UK has increased by more than 75% in comparison with last year's figure. Since we struck our enhanced returns agreement with Albania in December, we have returned more than 4,100 Albanian immigration offenders, and, as I saw for myself in Tirana last month, some of those individuals are being returned home in as little as 48 hours."
As we reported on EIN earlier this month, the Refugee Council found in a briefing paper that the 20% decline in Channel crossings this year is overwhelmingly due to a reduction in the number of Albanian nationals making the journey.
Labour's shadow immigration minister Stephen Kinnock responded to Jenrick's announcement by saying the situation was one of more 'Tory boats chaos'.
Kinnock told Commons: "For the third year running, more than 25,000 people have crossed the channel in small boats, while the number of hotels being used is about 400, at an eye-watering cost to the taxpayer of £8 million a day—higher than the cost last year. And what is the Government's response? A Rwanda plan, but they have sent more Home Secretaries than asylum seekers to Rwanda; an Illegal Migration Act that is counterproductive and has not even been brought into full force yet; and a new barge that was meant to bring down hotel costs, but has only added to them. Also, the military bases promised by the Prime Minister last December are still not ready. All of this has left the Prime Minister with an asylum strategy this summer that was less akin to the Australian asylum model that he is so desperate to replicate and more in tune with the Australian cricket team during this summer's Ashes: cross your fingers and pray for rain."
On the exiting of the 50 hotels, Kinnock said: "Today's announcement illustrates better than any other the utter lack of ambition the Prime Minister has for our country. It beggars belief that the Minister has the brass neck to come here today to announce not that the Government have cut the number of hotels being used but that they simply plan to do so, and by a paltry 12%. Is that really it? Is it really their ambition that there will still be 350 asylum hotels in use at the end of the winter, despite promises last year that they would end hotel use this year?"
The Refugee Council said on X (formerly Twitter) that the immigration minister's announcement had effectively confirmed that there was no reason why more than 50,000 people ever needed to be crammed into wholly unsuitable hotels.
"The cost and chaos of an asylum backlog that has spiralled out of control is a result of gross Government failure leaving people in limbo for years on end. In closing hotels, we are now seeing a homelessness crisis developing with newly recognised refugees being given as little as seven days before they are evicted from accommodation. Instead of being a moment of celebration, receiving refugee status is, for far too many, currently a ticket to homelessness, with the cost being passed on to councils. The Government should put in place an asylum system that treats people with humanity, giving them a fair hearing in the UK, providing the support they need and a decision in months, not years. The Illegal Migration Act will do the exact opposite, leading to the creation of yet another backlog and more human misery," the Refugee Council added.
Meanwhile, the Guardian reported yesterday that the charity Care4Calais has begun a legal challenge over the standard of accommodation provided for asylum seekers at the former military base in Wethersfield, Essex. Care4Calais argues that the Home Office is unlawfully segregating and falsely imprisoning around 200 asylum seekers at the site.
Steve Smith of Care4Calais told the Guardian: "What we are witnessing is a form of segregation. This current government has given up on any pretence of trying to integrate asylum seekers into UK society, by putting them in de facto prison camps and barges. Falsely imprisoning asylum seekers behind barbed-wire fences, placing them under 24/7 surveillance, restricting their liberty and separating them from any semblance of community is now the chosen policy of this government. We believe it is unlawful."