Government refuses to give timeline on ending use of asylum hotels

The Prime Minister drew parallels with his earlier work in counter-terrorism as he spoke at the Interpol General Assembly in Glasgow yesterday, marking the start of a week-long campaign on small boat crossings.

He also touted international cooperation to tackle people smuggling and said he would push to regain access to the EU’s real-time intelligence sharing networks during talks in Hungary later this week.

The Home Secretary meanwhile would not commit to specific targets or a timeframe for getting small boat crossings down, but said that the Government will “try and make progress as rapidly as possible”.

Yvette Cooper, who is also the MP for Pontefract, Castleford and Knottingley, said that she would not “set out slogans and say everything was going to be solved in 12 months, and all on the basis of a slogan, because I don’t think people will take that seriously any more”.

Downing Street also refused to give a timeline on Labour keeping its manifesto commitment to end the use of asylum hotels.

Currently, the government outsources asylum accommodation to private companies like Clearsprings, Mears and Serco.

This has led to a reliance on hotels to house migrants, with costs rising from £17,000 per person in 2019-20 to £41,000 per person in 2023-24.

While over that time the overall cost of the asylum system has risen from £739 million to £4.7 billion.

Certain chains like Britannia Hotels, which owns the Grand in Scarborough, have become known for turning millions of pounds in profits on taxpayer contracts to home migrants.

The multimillionaire owner Alex Langsam has been dubbed the “asylum king”.

The Grade II-listed building, once dubbed one of the seven wonders of the English seaside by Historic England, is now Yorkshire’s most complained about hotel with more than 4,200 terrible reviews on Tripadvisor.

In other places, like the Holiday Inn in Wath-upon-Dearne, near Rotherham, such hotels have become targets of violence.

During the summer riots, far-right thugs tried to burn down the building with asylum seekers inside.

Dozens of people were jailed following the incident. 

The Prime Minister’s official spokesperson told The Yorkshire Post: “We’ve inherited the system that was in chaos and it is going to take time to restore order to that system. 

“The manifesto commitment remains that we want to end the use of asylum hotels and save taxpayers billions of pounds. 

“The Home Office spending review settlement forecasts significant savings in the asylum bill which will obviously require us to process those decisions and reduce taxpayer funding for asylum accommodation. 

“But clearly the size of the existing backlog coupled with the increase in arrivals since the start of the year means clearly we are forced to use hotels in the meantime, but this is not a permanent solution.”