The Linton-on-Ouse asylum seeker plans should never have been revived - Andrew Vine

It defies belief how any minister, or civil servant working for them, could possibly imagine that dumping thousands of people in the middle of the Yorkshire countryside is anything other than a notion that should immediately be rejected.

Evidently, no such ability to recognise a terrible idea exists among those responsible for dealing with Britain’s migration problem, or they would never even have considered it.

This tells us something else about those ministers and officials. It reveals a profound lack of understanding of the country they are supposed to have a hand in running or the feelings of its people, and a disregard for the practicalities of rural life in places like North Yorkshire.

To them, closeted complacently in their London offices, two hours away by train from York, a place such as Linton-on-Ouse is just a dot on a map, or a name on a spreadsheet of disused military camps.

They have no concept of the local conditions, nor of how totally unsuitable a place a small village is to house a substantial number of predominantly young men, possibly for years while the process of deciding their asylum claims crawls along.

Such a degree of ignorance should be intolerable in any competent government, but instead is quite obviously driving decisions.

Like its Conservative predecessor, this Labour government is flailing around for answers to the problem of illegal migration and failing to find them, hence the revival of the Linton-on-Ouse scheme. It is not excessively cynical to suggest that the village is the unwitting victim of a desire to render the problem less visible, a sleight-of-hand to make the migrants disappear in order to persuade the public that fewer are arriving in

Britain without permission, either aboard boats landing on the beaches of Kent or by more devious routes. Spiriting a few thousand away to the Yorkshire countryside would certainly achieve that. But getting them out of sight does not mean they will be out of mind.

The residents of Linton-on-Ouse had every right to expect that the battle to stop their village becoming a dumping ground was won four years ago when the plan was first announced and then abandoned. It was wrong in 2022 when the Tories came up with it and it’s just as wrong now.

Let’s not forget that in opposition, Labour was endlessly critical of the Conservatives’ handling of illegal migrants. Yet now it has power, the party is attempting to foist the identical misguided plan on Yorkshire.

Villagers are justified in being even angrier now than they were in 2022. Dropping the plan in the face of bitter opposition was an acknowledgement by the government that it was fatally flawed and would wreck the character of the area.

The wider opposition being expressed is more vociferous than four years ago.

Once again, local MPs and North Yorkshire Council are implacably opposed, and they have been joined by the first mayor of York and North Yorkshire, Labour’s David Skaith, elected two years after the original proposals were abandoned.

It would completely undermine the new Prime Minister’s claim to be focussed on giving the regions greater powers if an asylum centre was imposed on the patch of one of his own elected mayors against the will of both residents and their elected representatives.

Their concerns can only have been deepened when it emerged last week that any contract to operate the holding centre would probably be handed to one of the companies whose track records on housing migrants are less than impressive.

The arguments in favour of the government dropping its plans are as unanswerable now as they were in 2022. There is no infrastructure to support an asylum centre, and the sheer number of migrants would simply swamp the area.

Mr Skaith’s deputy mayor for policing, Jo Coles, was undoubtedly correct when she spoke of “serious and legitimate concerns about the impact on policing, emergency services and wider community safety”.

No responsible government could give the green light to the Linton-on-Ouse plan, however desperate ministers are to make good on their pledge to end the use of hotels to house migrants.