Asylum Seekers: Support and Accommodation

Monday 20th October 2025 Westminster Hall

[Relevant Documents: Oral evidence taken before the Home Affairs Committee on 1 July, 10 June, 13 May, 29 April and 18 March, on asylum accommodation, HC 580.]

16:30

[Tony Vaughan (Folkestone and Hythe) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered e-petitions 705383 and 718406 relating to support and accommodation for asylum seekers.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Murrison. I lead this debate for the Petitions Committee, and I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests for the support I receive from the Refugee, Asylum, Migration and Policy Project. I start by thanking the petition creators, Robert Barnes and Bob Clements, and all those who have signed the two petitions. Mr Barnes’s petition calls on the Government to

“Shut the migrant hotels down now and deport illegal migrants housed there”,

and was signed by more than 256,000 people. Mr Clements’s petition calls on the Government to

“Stop financial and other support for asylum seekers”,

and has more than 427,000 signatures.

Mr Barnes, whom I spoke with last week, does not oppose asylum. He believes that we should grant sanctuary to those fleeing persecution at home. He is absolutely right about that fundamental truth. It is who we are. Our British values of fairness and decency explain why, across generations, we have welcomed refugees from the across the globe—those escaping Hitler’s tyranny, Idi Amin’s brutality or Soviet oppression. Each time, some voices demanded closed borders, and each time, Britain chose humanity over heartlessness.

Those values were in action when, on 14 October 1914, 16,000 Belgian refugees reached Folkestone harbour in my constituency in one day, fleeing Germany’s invasion. Those arrivals instantly doubled the town’s population, yet locals immediately organised food, clothing, shelter and medical care. Some 250,000 Belgian refugees found sanctuary across Britain during world war one, which reflected the instinctive human compassion for others’ desperation—a compassion built into our British sense of fairness.

We see those values enduring in my constituency today, in the activities of the local charity Napier Friends, which supports residents at Napier barracks. The charity has achieved incredible things, running English classes and creating volunteer opportunities to help our local community, including litter picking and organising gleaning, which is essentially collecting extra local produce to donate to food banks for people who need that extra food. My recent Napier visit showed outstanding work both by Napier Friends and current staff, and I thank them for all their work and for the compassion they show in doing it.

The key question the petitions ask is simple: how should we treat people while they wait for their asylum decision from the UK Government? It is that waiting time that costs the state money, because asylum applicants cannot work for the first 12 months. There is a strong argument for shortening that period to around six months, as France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy and Spain have done, to ease pressure on the accommodation system. Mr Barnes told me that he does not want to throw asylum applicants out on to the street. He wants to end hotel use. He wants to speed up asylum processing. He wants us to be quicker at removing people with no right to stay.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I am grateful for the hon. and learned Member’s opening remarks. I too would like to put on record the support I get from the Refugee, Asylum, Migration and Policy Project. The Government have managed to get the number of people waiting for initial decision down by 18% in the last year, which is good, but the number waiting for an appeal is up by 88%. One in two asylum seekers has no access to legal representation through the process, and that is what is slowing it down. Would the hon. Gentleman agree that ensuring that asylum seekers get that representation is just, and also will oil the wheels so we get people moved quicker?

[Tony Vaughan]

I agree with the hon. Member that we absolutely must ensure that those seeking asylum have proper access to legal aid. It is much quicker and cheaper in the long run if we can flush out all the claims at the outset, so that we do not have them raised at the last minute, when perhaps costs are higher. I am absolutely behind the hon. Member on that.

On the points that Mr Barnes made to me, I agree with him, and I imagine that the Government do too. Labour’s manifesto promised to end hotel use by the end of this Parliament, and we are already well ahead of schedule. Hotel use peaked in August 2023 at £9 million spent every day across 400 facilities; since taking power, Labour has already cut hotel numbers in half and slashed £500 million yearly from asylum hotel costs, closing 23 asylum hotels.

[Mike Wood (Kingswinford and South Staffordshire) (Con)]

On the hon. and learned Gentleman’s claim that the Government are making progress, does he expect the total number of nights spent in hotels by asylum seekers to be higher or lower this year than it was last year?

[Tony Vaughan]

I do not know what is going to happen; I cannot predict the future. The point I am making is that the measures that are being taken are moving us faster in the right direction than even we had intended at the outset of the Parliament.

Labour also promised to clear the asylum backlog created by the last Government’s effective pausing of asylum decision making. This Labour Government have recruited more decision makers and sped up processing. In the first six months of this year, the Government processed about 60,000 asylum claims—around 70% more than the same period last year. On removing those with no right to stay, enforced returns have been increased by 25%, compared with the Conservatives’ final years in office.

There is of course still much more to do to win back public confidence in our asylum system. Mr Barnes supports the use of larger sites such as Napier barracks in Folkestone and former RAF Wethersfield. I visited Napier recently; while it has historically had poor conditions, they have improved in recent years. Napier costs the state around £106 per night, which is less than hotels, albeit not drastically so, and we should not forget that the set-up costs for large sites are huge—in the case of Wethersfield they were around £49 million.

The real alternative to hotels could be social housing. We must push for a better way than paying billions of pounds to private companies that make millions in profit, when that money could be spent on buying up assets and replenishing our national housing stock for the future. The BBC reports that the Home Office is looking into pilot schemes on that front. Any option that redirects even some of this accommodation expenditure into publicly owned housing assets, while supporting the asylum accommodation even temporarily, deserves serious attention.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds Central and Headingley) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. and learned Friend is making an excellent case. I understand that we are having this debate because 427,000 people signed the petition, but I hope that they are never in the circumstances that asylum seekers find themselves in. In terms of the accommodation, does my hon. and learned Friend agree that as we are moving people out of hotels and into better, community-based facilities, we need wraparound support in health and education, particularly learning English, legal support, integration into our communities and learning about British culture?

[Tony Vaughan]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend.

I will turn now to the issue of asylum support, and make two key points. First, people claiming asylum cannot access the UK’s mainstream benefits system. They receive initial full-board accommodation for 90 days, plus about £10 weekly. After that they move to longer-term housing and get around £49.18 a week for food, clothing and toiletries, which is much less than universal credit rates.

Secondly, the UK’s asylum support system is not a pull factor, as some, including Migration Watch, have claimed. The UK rate of £49.18 weekly barely beats France’s €47.60. Once we add in the costs of making an illegal crossing from France, the UK benefits system does not leave an adult male asylum seeker in a better position than in France. Evidence also shows that family, community and cultural connections matter far more than the benefits system.

Picture this, Dr Murrison: imagine that tomorrow we cut all asylum seeker financial support and closed all asylum hotels. What would happen next? Without alternatives, it would increase rough sleeping by over 500%, with over 30,000 more destitute people on our streets. That approach would clearly be immoral, as I trust hon. Members would agree. It would also pile massive pressure on social services, local authorities, NHS emergency services and the police.

The petitioners’ alternative to state support in the community is mass detention. Migration Watch also calls for the detention of all asylum claimants, as its director told me in a conversation last week as I prepared for this debate. Let us think that through. It would clearly be unlawful. It would also be inhumane, financially ruinous and completely useless. There are about 102,000 people in UK asylum accommodation, but our immigration detention capacity is only 2,200, so we would need a massive new detention facility expansion for immediate mass detention.

What would that expansion cost? Based on Ministry of Justice prison expansion plans, the National Audit Office estimates that a single new prison place would cost at least £470,000, excluding land and other costs. That is £47 billion for 100,000 detention places, which is about a third of the entire NHS budget. On top of that, immigration detention costs are about £122 per day, adding up to around £4.5 billion per year for that number of people. Clearly, detention on that scale would mean massive cuts to public services and huge tax rises.

[John Milne (Horsham) (LD)]

We would all like to see an end to the use of hotels, which is both wasteful and very unpopular in local communities. However, would the hon. and learned Member agree that the long-term solution to that, releasing pressure across the entire system, is a proper returns agreement with as many countries as possible, but definitely with France, so that we do not need to use any form of accommodation, large camps or hotels?

[Tony Vaughan]

We did have a returns agreement with Europe before we withdrew from the European Union—the Dublin regulation. It was this Government that negotiated a new agreement with France in the UK-France deal. That deal, which is compliant with all the international obligations we have, is the potential way forward to solving the problem.

[Sir Ashley Fox (Bridgwater) (Con)]

Does the hon. and learned Member accept that under the Dublin regulation the United Kingdom was a net recipient of refugees?

[Tony Vaughan]

The reality is that, if we do not have a mechanism in place—and it was essentially jettisoned by the Conservative party—there is no way of creating either a deterrent or a way of working with our colleagues in Europe to address these problems upstream. If we took the position of the Conservative party, which is to withdraw from the European convention and other international instruments, who would work with us upstream? France would not have signed that UK-France deal—signed in the summer by the Prime Minister—if we had been outside of the European convention on human rights. It is Brexit 2.0 from the Opposition. The Government are offering serious alternatives that simply are not being offered by anyone else.

What would mass detention actually achieve? The answer is nothing at all. It would not make it easier to carry out removals, because detention is already used for people who are ready for removal. Somebody with an outstanding asylum claim or who has no travel documents cannot be removed anyway. Would mass detentions stop people from coming? That is highly doubtful.

It is easy to underestimate how incredibly desperate many of the people who are arriving on small boats are. We assume that deterrents will defeat desperation, but both the Rwanda gimmick and other populist plans assume too much about the psychology of the people making these dangerous journeys. Mass detention is easy to say, but it is just another gimmick—inhumane, extortionate and, I am afraid, completely pointless.

During my recent visit to Napier barracks, I met an Iranian teacher who said simply, “I just want to live safely.” I believe that we can show the compassion to give him that chance, while keeping order and control in our asylum system. The Government’s current path of clearing the backlog, cutting hotel use, and increasing removals where claims have been refused deserves our full support. Most people simply want a fair, competent asylum system that commands both our conscience and our confidence.

[Lincoln Jopp (Spelthorne) (Con)]

The hon. and learned Member said he met an asylum seeker at Napier barracks who said that they just wanted to be safe. Assuming that they had come from France, did he investigate with that person why they were unsafe in France?

[Tony Vaughan]

The logic of that is that every country neighbouring a conflict zone should take all the refugees. That is an absurd proposition. We have to take our fair share of refugees. We take fewer than other European countries, and a responsible approach to this issue accepts that there is not an obligation to claim asylum in any particular country. The question is whether we are taking our fair share and complying with our international obligations—which, as I have said, the UK-France deal will achieve if it can be scaled up.

Most people want a fair, competent asylum system that processes claims in months rather than years, with a sustainable asylum support system that ultimately upholds the values that make us who we are as a nation.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Dr Andrew Murrison (in the Chair)]

I remind Members that they should bob if they want to be called in the debate—I see that most colleagues are doing so.

16:44

[Lincoln Jopp (Spelthorne) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison.

In my constituency we have the Stanwell hotel, which is currently an asylum hotel. From correspondence in my mailbag, I had heard there was the potential for the Home Office to change its policy on use. Hitherto, the capacity for families at the Stanwell hotel was 114, and the families who were there had integrated well. They had gone to local schools, got involved in local churches and in some cases were undergoing medical treatment as a result of pre-existing conditions. There were also some single people there. I visited on 3 October and was told there had been no history of poor interactions between single males and families.

The residents of Trinity Close were very concerned because they got wind of a rumour that the Stanwell hotel was going to be reconfigured from being pretty much families only to being used for single males only, so they asked me to try to find out. I wrote to the Home Office on three occasions and asked how long the contract for the hotel had been signed for, but the Home Office did not reply, so I had to raise it with the Home Secretary on the Floor of the House. I was assured that I would receive a response, including a date when I could visit. The Home Office team were then all cleared out; I could speculate on the reasons, but the Government will know.

I finally got a chance to visit on 3 October, when I spent two hours there and learned a number of things. First, the hotel had not quite transitioned to full capacity for single males. I was told it was going to take a matter of weeks, so it is possible that it has been done now. This is of great concern to local residents, who much preferred it when the hotel was used for families only, because of its proximity to schools and green spaces, which makes Stanwell village a pretty inappropriate place for 98 single males only.

I saw the conditions people were in, with two to a room. One thing really got to me. The Government’s line is that they want to reduce the number of hotels, so they are going to sweat the existing estate harder by putting more people into it so that they can close things down. I was aghast to find that the Stanwell’s capacity as a families-only hotel was way higher than when it is used for single males, which did not make sense to me.

Having written to the Home Office to ask when the contract was going to end, I was told in a letter that that was not the sort of commercial information it was customary to share. I was delighted to get a letter yesterday confirming that what I had heard on the visit was correct and the contract ends on 31 July next year.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes the local council has been trying to find out what has been going on, as I have in parallel. At an emergency general meeting the Conservative group on Spelthorne borough council proposed an amendment calling for the hotel to be returned to use as a community hotel, which is exactly what the community wants. It is the place where people went for weddings and funerals, for playing cards in the afternoon and for Sunday lunch, and that is what they want it to be again. I was fairly surprised, then, that Spelthorne borough council, which comprises independents, Liberals and Labour, voted against returning it to use as a community hotel, which is Government policy. The Minister might wish to follow that up with Labour councillors in Spelthorne.

[Tim Farron]

I commend the hon. Member for taking the time to visit to see for himself and to hear people’s voices, and I mean that sincerely. More colleagues should do that before forming opinions. What he is talking about is the use of a private asset for public purposes and at the cost of public money. At the same time, those in that hotel are on £9.95 a week, so they are not living the life of Riley, as I am sure the hon. Member agrees. There is a cost to the taxpayer, and misery and hardship for the asylum seekers. Does he think that one answer is to give asylum seekers the right to work, so that they can pay their own way and integrate better? It would be better for them and their families, and better for the taxpayer.

[Lincoln Jopp]

When President Macron visited earlier this year, he said part of the problem was that there were far too many pull factors in Britain. Giving people the right to work would, to my mind, be another pull factor. The Government would quite rightly say, “Well, you didn’t manage to do it either,” but I would much rather we were able to control our borders ab initio, so that we did not have to face the problem of asylum hotels.

[Tony Vaughan]

I want to underline the point I made in my speech, which is that France has a six-month period before work is permitted, so there is not that pull factor, or certainly not at that point.

[Lincoln Jopp]

I thank the hon. and learned Member for his intervention.

I am going to be a bit “beggar thy neighbour”-ish, I am afraid, but my reason for highlighting the Stanwell hotel is that I believe a number of the other contracts run to two or three years longer than the one there. Given that it is Government policy to close all asylum hotels within this Parliament, I encourage the Minister to place the Stanwell hotel at the top of the list. Not only is it not good to renegotiate a contract when we do not have to, but if the Government are going to do all this in the space of this Parliament, they need to start somewhere, and I recommend that they start with the Stanwell hotel in my Spelthorne constituency.

[Chris Murray (Edinburgh East and Musselburgh) (Lab)]

I draw the House’s attention to the support that I receive from RAMP. Six years ago, we did not have asylum hotels in Stanwell or anywhere else, but we do now, because the previous Conservative Government signed contracts with private providers, which led to the mass increase in hotels. This Government’s policy is to reduce the number of hotels to zero. When the hon. Member was engaging with his constituents, did he set out that it was his party’s responsibility for opening asylum hotels in the first place?

[Lincoln Jopp]

My party’s responsibility—although I was not here myself—is not just for signing the contracts for the hotels; it is for losing control of our borders in the first place. The Government have said they are going to get control of the borders, but sadly the numbers simply do not support that. I did not intervene on the hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan) when he was moving the motion, but I was tempted to ask him how many had gone back to France under the one in, one out scheme. The answer is not going to change the price of fish.

When the Minister makes his plan for the closure of the hotels, he should be aware that the Stanwell hotel is now controversial. The residents very much do not want it to be used for single male migrants only; they were very accommodating when it was used for families. I fear that if it is not a high priority for closure, there could be drama in the offing, so I would add it to the Minister’s list of things to do—and I am going to make as much noise about it as it takes for him to want to shut me up by doing what I want.

16:53

[Apsana Begum (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

My constituents voted for me to continue to oppose austerity, defend our local services, support survivors of violence and press for urgent immigration reform that centres migrant rights and ensures legal protection, survivor support and dignity in accommodation. That is why we have been alarmed by campaigns that target asylum seekers who are confined in hotels, including campaigns outside the Britannia hotel in my constituency. Some of those campaigns claim it is a five-star hotel with a swimming pool, which I know is definitely not the case.

Anti-racist campaigners have reported co-ordinated efforts to intimidate communities with flag raising, anti-migrant chants, aggressive interventions in local debates, and even the filming of asylum seekers being transported to hotels. Charities and specialist organisations are warning that such campaigns are leading to the dehumanising of asylum seekers and cultivating climates of fear and division.

Asylum seekers are men, women and children exercising their right to seek asylum after being forced to flee wars and persecution. I am very proud of our long history as a refuge for immigrant communities. Poplar and Limehouse is a place where people fleeing persecution, seeking work or simply looking for a new start have found a home and built communities. In Poplar and Limehouse, we know that it is not refugees and migrants, but austerity measures that have weakened local infrastructure and public services, leaving communities struggling with high costs and underfunded support—a situation that the far right frequently and unjustly blames on migrants and asylum seekers, despite repeated evidence to the contrary.

What is that evidence to the contrary? Let me touch on a few examples. First, the UK’s current system forces asylum seekers to wait for over a year before they can apply for the right to work, and even then they are restricted to jobs on the shortage occupation list. Many survive on just less than £7 per day. That contrasts sharply with other European nations such as France, Spain and Germany, where asylum seekers gain the right to work after three to six months.

Just last year, research by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research found that lifting the asylum seekers work ban could reduce Government expenditure by £6.7 billion annually. The Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill retains harmful policies, including expanded powers of detention. An amendment to lift the work ban was tabled, but it was defeated, despite cross-party support. Asylum seekers must be able to work unconditionally; that would surely support integration, mental health and the overall economy.

Secondly, the UK lacks accessible safe routes for refugees, forcing many to make perilous journeys. In February this year a report by the all-party parliamentary group on refugees found current routes to be “inaccessible and inadequate”. The Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill itself introduces counter-terror-style powers to criminalise smuggling networks that risk prosecuting refugees. Campaigners have labelled it an “anti-refugee” Bill. Surely we need an expansion of safe routes, the establishment of emergency visa schemes and the repeal of deterrent-based policies.

Finally, the “Restoring control over the immigration system” White Paper, which proposes extending the qualifying period for indefinite leave to remain from five to 10 years, is creating uncertainty for migrants, while the immigration health surcharge unfairly targets migrant workers. People cannot access public funds anyway, but targeting them through the immigration health charge as well makes it essentially a punitive tax on people who are essential workers. We need to abolish the charge, reduce visa restrictions for care workers and reject the White Paper’s punitive measures as a whole.

The UK really must be aware of the need to uphold its moral and legal obligations to protect refugees and prioritise humanity over hostility in the immigration system. From ending indefinite detention to creating safe routes, we need policies that reflect our values of dignity and compassion. That is why I will continue to push back against toxic narratives and stand up for solidarity, truth and the rights of all who live here.

That commitment is in line with the traditions of solidarity in the east end of London, where we see diversity as a strength and all our communities include migrants from all around the world—where Jewish communities and allies opposed fascists at the battle of Cable street in 1936; where the murder of Altab Ali brought people out on the streets; where the Bangladeshi community led the anti-fascist mobilisation in the 1970s and where the communities on the Isle of Dogs defeated the division, intolerance and hate spread by the British National party in the 1990s.

We know that hardship can be overcome collectively. That is why, as we look back on our rich history of welcoming refugees and migrants, we look to our present, fully aware that the far right is planning to target our area once again this week, on Saturday 25 October, amid a rise in racist, Islamophobic and antisemitic attacks—and where just a couple of years ago more than 700 people were evacuated from the East London Mosque, London Muslim Centre and nearby schools following a bomb threat. We will stand together in defiance on Saturday and we will say, “¡No pasarán! They shall not pass!”

17:00

[Seamus Logan (Aberdeenshire North and Moray East) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I acknowledge the petitioners and their call for

“a cessation of financial and other support”

but I rise to challenge the petition. I thank the hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan) for his very learned contribution to opening the debate.

I will begin by responding to people who believe asylum seekers are a problem in our local communities. Those people’s real enemy does not arrive on these shores in a small boat, wearing a lifejacket. Their real enemy arrives in a private jet, or in a big plane, wearing designer clothes and expensive jewellery. Some of the real enemies of the people sit on the Benches of this place and the other place. They appear on radio and TV, selling falsehoods like snake oil salesmen.

The SNP Government in Scotland have been clear: Labour must end the hostile environment for asylum seekers and deliver an effective and humane asylum system that meets the UK’s international legal obligations. That means putting an end, as soon as possible, to accommodating asylum seekers in hotels. Politicians also need to end the ridiculous disinformation around those locations that suggests they are some form of luxury accommodation. As anyone who has visited such a facility knows—the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp) has visited one, so he will know—they are nothing of the sort.

Labour’s proposals to consider using large industrial sites and military locations are equally concerning. These people have fled war, persecution, famine, drought and terrorism. Military bases are not acceptable, nor is a lack of support services. That lack will exacerbate their problems, which often include mental health problems.

[Chris Murray]

How does the hon. Gentleman reconcile his point about the UK Government with the fact that, under the Homes for Ukraine scheme, the Scottish Government’s policy was to house Ukrainian refugees in hotels across Scotland, and on cruise ships?

[Seamus Logan]

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention, but what he is describing is not quite the same thing.

Many asylum seekers have valuable skills and are keen to contribute to society and the economy; it is Home Office dogma inherited from the Tories and driven by Reform UK that prevents them from doing so. The term “illegal migrant” is divisive, dehumanising and inaccurate. People are not illegal. The UK is a signatory to the 1951 UN refugee convention and the supporting 1967 protocol, meaning that it has international legal obligations to recognise refugees in the UK, to protect them and to meet minimum treatment standards. Article 31 of the convention gives refugees the right not to be punished for irregular entry into the territory of a contracting state. The UK is an island and it does not allow people to apply for asylum from overseas. Similarly, there is no visa allowing people to enter the UK to make an asylum claim.

People of course have the right to peaceful protest in a democracy, but the protests outside hotels and the accompanying rhetoric have often gone far beyond what is acceptable. Those protests are creating a sense of real fear and alarm for people who have been through so much. Refugees must not be scapegoated. They should be treated as decent human beings and their potential to be full members of our communities should be recognised.

Successive UK Governments’ mismanagement of the asylum system is creating serious pressure for local authorities, especially Glasgow city council. The Scottish Government are making more than £115 million available in Glasgow to support the delivery of more social and affordable homes, but the Home Office must also urgently provide more financial assistance to enable local authorities to provide safety and sanctuary for people seeking asylum.

UK Ministers must also engage with the Scottish Government, who have called repeatedly on the Home Office to meet them and Glasgow city council, but to no avail. In April, the Scottish Refugee Council invited Scotland’s Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice to attend a roundtable meeting with the council and the UK Government. Disappointingly, UK Government Ministers chose not to attend.

Asylum seekers are not coming over here, taking all our jobs and our houses, living high on the hog on benefits, and clogging up our GP surgeries and schools. Those are the lies peddled by some politicians and wannabe leaders to distract us from the real issues that should concern people: the rising cost of living, sky-high energy bills, and wages stagnating while the rich grow richer at the expense of the working men and women of this country. They are distracting us—“Look over here. Get angry about this!”—instead of focusing on the real issues. Scotland and its people want to take a different path—a path that echoes the best traditions of our ancient Celtic people, who prided themselves on providing hospitality and a welcome to the stranger.

The following facts might sit uncomfortably with the people in my constituency who signed this petition, but facts they are. Our birth rate is falling. Our workforce size is decreasing—declining. Our older people are living longer and growing in number. Who will care for them, treat them, feed them and pay taxes to run their public services? We need migrants to fill our labour shortages. Our health services need their skills. Our social care teams need their help. Our fishers and fish processors need them urgently. Our farmers need them. Our hospitality and tourism industries need their help. Therefore, rather than closing our borders to all, let us find safe and legal routes for the asylum seeker. Let us make migration routes clearer and easier to understand, not harder.

To conclude, I have four requests of the Minister and this Government. I ask them first, to end the use of hotels; secondly, to provide safe and supportive accommodation; thirdly, to grant asylum seekers and their dependants the right to work; and finally, to reframe messaging on migration in a more positive and humane way.

17:06

[Mr Luke Charters (York Outer) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Murrison. We need to close the hotels, but as a Labour MP I will make the progressive and moral case for doing so.

Let me first talk about the current law. There is a very helpful House of Commons Library report setting out the law: the Home Office must provide accommodation that is adequate for people’s needs. As a parent, I will say why we must have concern for the living conditions of children in asylum accommodation. In my view, hotels are not suitable living environments for asylum-seeking children and their families for longer-term stays. Let us think about what we are talking about here—children sleeping while cockroaches scuttle by and rats run next to their faces. That happened in this country under the last Government. Even today, we find that many families are confined to small living spaces where the bed serves as the bedroom, living room, dining area and study space all at once. These are children in British primary schools.

I know personally of a case in which an asylum-seeking child did not have the space to store her disability equipment, and I have heard of toddlers who have insufficient room to crawl, use a highchair or go on their potty. These children have fled war-torn countries. Is it their fault that they are seeking asylum? Absolutely not. Do they deserve to live in unsuitable accommodation through no fault of their own? Absolutely not.

Let us think back to the performative cruelty of a certain Minister in the last Government who ordered the painting over of child asylum unit murals. That is who they are. Let me talk about our Government’s dispersal strategy, because dispersal accommodation is more cost-effective, and I hope that we can all agree on the central premise that dispersal accommodation is also more appropriate for asylum-seeking families and children.

[Lincoln Jopp]

I omitted to say that, in Stanwell’s case, all the families who were moved out of the hotel were simply moved to another hotel, so although I agree with the hon. Member, he needs to know what his Government are up to in order to make his case more strongly.

[Mr Charters]

I know the hon. Member will therefore welcome the Government’s plan to end the use of asylum hotels. I hope he will join me in accepting the premise that dispersal accommodation, where it is more stable and more community based, is more suitable for children than the hotel that he speaks of in his constituency.

Closing the hotels is a progressive responsibility, but let me be clear about what the Government have already achieved. They have brought down the number of asylum hotels, from over 400 to about 210 now, and have reduced the number of people in hotels—

[Mike Wood]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Charters]

Let me just finish. At its worst under the Tories, the system cost the taxpayer £9 million a day, which has already been cut to £5.5 million a day. That is not a gimmick; it is delivery.

Let me talk about the scandal of profiteering, however, because the public are paying the price while private hotel companies and contractors profit. I will be blunt: £180 million in profit was made by one hotel company where toilet roll was rationed, asylum seekers were fed inedible expired food, and families and children lived with cockroaches, rodents, damp and mould. That is absolutely disgusting—it is a disgrace, frankly, that under the last Government taxpayer money was funding such hotels. It is absolutely right that we work to close them by 2029.

[Phil Brickell (Bolton West) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent point about the number of asylum seeker hotels being reduced from 400 to roughly 200 in the last two years, and an important point about profit making. Does he agree that firms such as Serco have an obligation to be accountable, transparent and responsive to elected Members who are seeking not only to obtain information on behalf of their constituents but to ensure that people placed in dispersal accommodation are kept safe? In my experience, such firms are not responsive or transparent in the way that they should be.

[Mr Charters]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that companies should be transparent about those things, not only on a contractual basis with the Government but on a moral basis. We are a country of great compassion, and where contractors are profiteering from asylum accommodation for children, they have to learn to embody the value of compassion that we have in this great country.

Many charities have raised the issue of children living in such terrible conditions. Let me say, as a former member of the Public Accounts Committee, that the situation also represents terrible value for money for the taxpayer. The National Audit Office found that since 2019, the three main accommodation providers have made nearly £400 million from asylum contracts—they are profiting from those terrible conditions. That is not who we are; it is not what Britain should ever stand for.

That is why I am proud that the Government are committing to making that stop, and that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is going to fix it. Through the Government’s new dispersal strategy, we will see those hotels being closed, and much more suitable dispersal accommodation for asylum-seeking children and their families will be made available.

I must come on to Reform UK, which shouts from the sidelines. We have not yet heard from the hon. Member for Runcorn and Helsby (Sarah Pochin) about the few ideas that Reform is proposing, but perhaps she will address one issue in her speech. When we interrogate Reform UK’s plans, we find that they talk about using the British overseas territories. As someone who has visited the Falklands and other overseas territories, I find that suggestion deeply troubling and unrealistic. When she rises to speak, hopefully she will give some assurance that Reform UK will rule out using the Falkland Islands in its asylum plans.

Reform UK proposes to deport 600,000 people over five years and to abolish indefinite leave to remain. Sadly, I believe that the latter idea is currying favour on the Opposition Benches, but the idea of abolishing ILR and tearing families apart is not policy; it is performative cruelty. Those proposals are fantasies that would rip this country apart, as the Prime Minister has rightly said.

We are a country proud of its compassion towards refugee children through the ages. Britain’s tradition of welcoming and protecting refugees is deeply rooted in our history, from sheltering Belgian refugees in world war one to rescuing Jewish children through the Kindertransport and supporting Hungarians escaping Soviet oppression. More recently, in modern times, we have stood with Ukrainians fleeing war, through bespoke visa schemes. That commitment embodies the very best of British values, reflecting our openness and humanity in times of crisis.

Among those who found safety here was Freddie Mercury, a refugee from Zanzibar whose extraordinary talent transformed global music. Britain has also welcomed figures such as Lord Alf Dubs, a Kindertransport child who became a prominent MP in this place; Dua Lipa, whose family fled conflict in the Balkans; Nobel laureate Sigmund Freud, whose ideas changed the world, and so many others.

We are a tolerant and inclusive country that welcomes refugee families who are genuinely fleeing war and trauma, but we cannot go on as we are. There is a compassionate and progressive reason why hotels must be closed, so we must look with urgency to more suitable solutions, particularly for asylum-seeking children.

We are closing the hotels, not with slogans but with common sense and a serious plan that is grounded in compassion. We are overhauling the appeals system and introducing a new independent body with trained adjudicators, to cut the waiting times back from 54 weeks to a statutory 24 weeks. We are reducing the asylum backlog, and we are committing, of course, to ending asylum hotels by 2029.

People are frustrated. My constituents are frustrated. I get it. They should be angry about the reprehensible conditions that so many children are being forced to live in. We must ensure that there is suitable accommodation for asylum-seeking families with children. We are a kind, decent and compassionate country that wants to look after people who genuinely need help, but we do not want to line the pockets of hotel companies and other contractors in doing so when the conditions are unfair. We are closing the hotels, with a serious plan. This is who we are. This is what Britain stands for.

17:16

[Richard Foord (Honiton and Sidmouth) (LD)]

It is an honour to serve with you in the Chair, Dr Murrison.

I can entirely understand where the petitioners are coming from. After all, hotels are holiday accommodation, and for most people, the idea of spending a few days a year in a hotel is desirable—if probably unaffordable as things are at the moment—so I can completely understand people’s anger and outrage at the taxpayer paying for others to stay in hotels. However, I want to point out that the issues of asylum seeking have been conflated with other migration—migration supported by visas. I also want to talk about how alternatives to hotel accommodation might be found.

A September 2025 Reuters report concluded that the UK media frames immigration overwhelmingly through the lens of illegality and crisis, giving disproportionate attention to small-boat crossings relative to their scale. Legal migration is routinely lumped into that same narrative, and the distinction is blurred. We can see that very well from the numbers. In the year ending March 2025, the UK issued 875,000 visas for work, study and family purposes—legal migration. Subtract from that number those leaving, and net migration is 431,000, which is a large figure. In the same period, there were around 44,000 irregular arrivals, largely on small boats. Arrivals that were not supported by a visa therefore made up about 5% of all new arrivals and 10% of net migration.

On migration supported by visas, 260,000 people who were born outside the UK work as doctors, nurses and care workers in our health and social care system. Without legal migration supported by visas, our hospitals, care homes and even some farms would simply grind to a halt.

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful point; we desperately need people to come and work in our national health service and care sector. Does he agree that the case for legally working migrants and refugees who genuinely need asylum, perhaps from Syria or Afghanistan, and the case for our communities, who want stability, have been undermined by the staggering incompetence of the asylum system? Waiting times for decisions have gone up to more than a year, or more like a year and a half in nearly two thirds of all cases. That incompetence is stirring division and disbelief, and it needs to be addressed urgently.

[Richard Foord]

My hon. Friend is entirely right. The Government have to speed up decisions, cut backlogs and return those asylum seekers who are unsuccessful in their applications and have no right to stay, and they must that so swiftly.

[Clive Jones (Wokingham) (LD)]

My hon. Friend is making a really powerful speech. The Conservatives and the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) created this crisis in small boat crossings. Before the botched Brexit deal, we had, in effect, a returns agreement with every other EU nation under the Dublin system, as our hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (John Milne) said. Now this Government, like the last, are struggling to manage a rise in small boat crossings. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government must urgently negotiate more returns agreements with other EU countries?

[Richard Foord]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for talking about Europe, because our European neighbours are contending with exactly the same problems as us in this respect. The longer asylum seekers are drawn to the UK, the longer they are drawn into the European Union, so it is in our common interest to address this issue. I will talk a bit more about the EU and its member states later in my speech.

Pundits are blurring the two issues, and while people say that immigration is wrecking the economy, the truth is quite the reverse. According to the Office for Budget Responsibility, higher legal net migration is expected to raise our total GDP by around 1.5% by 2028-29, while GDP per capita is likely to be raised by 0.8%.

Migrants arriving with visas tend to arrive in their prime working years, paying more in taxes than they take out in services. According to the Migration Advisory Committee, in 2022-23, the average skilled migrant made a net contribution of around £16,300 to the UK public finances in their first year in the UK. Legal migration is a cornerstone of our economy, and because of our ageing population, it will continue to be so for years to come.

I will now address migration through irregular routes, which is the focus of this debate, and in particular the use of immigration hotels. In May 2025, the Government noted that they would spend £2.2 billion this financial year on migrant hotels. That is an eye-watering sum, but it is part of the £1.28 trillion—or more than £1,200 billion—that the Government spend each year, so we are talking about less than 0.2% of public spending. None the less, £2.2 billion is an enormous sum of money.

The UK counts these domestic refugee costs as official development assistance, and the House of Commons Library reported that in 2024, one fifth of all foreign aid was spent domestically on hotels. That makes me really angry. I am angrier, perhaps, than any of the petitioners on this point, because when we spend that money here in the UK, we do not use it to its full effect or achieve its full purchasing power.

Let us think about what official development assistance has achieved for us in recent years. Between 2013 and 2019, the UK committed £400 million to the eradication of polio and helped to vaccinate millions of children, leading to Africa being declared polio-free in 2020. These sorts of things are partly benevolent, but they are also in Britain’s interests. During the 2014 to 2016 Ebola outbreak, the UK provided £427 million in aid to Sierra Leone to address it. Had it arrived on these shores, we would certainly have had to spend so much more on addressing this absolutely appalling disease.

[Sir Ashley Fox]

Is the hon. Gentleman saying that it is Liberal Democrat policy that asylum costs should not come out of the foreign aid budget?

[Richard Foord]

I am of the view that asylum hotels should not be paid for by the foreign aid budget. This country has an international development budget that has fallen from 0.7%—when my party was in government with the hon. Gentleman’s—to 0.3% today, which is honestly a great pity. That is not helping us to prevent conflict and deal with the problem at source.

From 2014 to 2015, we had the Syrian vulnerable persons resettlement scheme, which was set up by the coalition Government. It brought 20,000 of the most vulnerable refugees, including survivors of torture and violence, to the UK, but in a way that was safe and legal. Those people were assessed for their suitability by the UN high commissioner for refugees. We are talking about women and children at risk, as well as those in severe medical need and survivors of torture. Those were people who did not try to get to the UK through Europe, because they were assessed for their vulnerability in the region, in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey.

Let us remember the vulnerable three-year-old refugee, Alan Kurdi, whose fragile body washed up on a beach, with waves lapping into his dead face. A lot of people had a lot of sympathy at that time for taking asylum seekers who were in genuine need through a safe and legal route. Today, we need to think about deterring illegal ways of approaching the UK, and Britain should work with neighbouring countries and look to collaborate on proposing a third country where failed asylum seekers may be processed overseas, such as one in south-east Europe. That is something that EU member states are looking into at the moment. Unsuccessful applicants could appeal from third countries, rather than from within the UK or EU, as is happening right now. We should work with our European partners so that we can find a continent-wide solution, because the UK will not be able to solve this alone.

While such schemes may act as an incentive for people to apply from their own region, we also need to think about a deterrent. I was wholly opposed to the Rwanda scheme, which was brought forward by the Conservative Government at a cost of £700 million and then scrapped. More could be made of the fact that people are coming to a pretty appalling end in the English channel. The Migration Observatory reports that 73 people were confirmed to have drowned in the English channel while attempting small boat crossings in 2024. The Royal National Lifeboat Institution recalled rescuing children with chemical burns from leaked petrol, and others so frozen that they could not walk because they had spent 30 hours at sea. A Home Affairs Committee report found in 2022 that smugglers deceive migrants and downplay the risks and danger. More could be made of that.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (in the Chair)]

Order. I have not imposed a time limit, but the hon. Gentleman has been going on considerably longer than other colleagues. He may wish to reflect on that.

[Richard Foord]

Thank you, Dr Murrison; I will conclude.

Legal migration builds our economy, and it staffs our hospitals and care homes. Crossings by people who do not have a visa are damaging trust in Government. A builder put it quite simply to me in recent months when he said that the last Government promised to stop the boats, but the opposite happened, and he had lost faith in Government as a result. We need to stop these dangerous crossings and restore order to a broken asylum system. That means investing in safe and legal routes and working with our European allies and partners on shared solutions, communicating the truth about the dangers of crossing the channel to those who would try to do so. If we do that, we can protect our borders and values, while upholding the compassionate and common-sense country that we are.

17:29

[Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Clapham and Brixton Hill) (Lab)]

I want to start by saying clearly and plainly that people who are fleeing war, famine, persecution and life-threatening situations are fully deserving of our compassion and support. I fear sometimes in these debates it sounds as if we have lost our humanity, empathy and compassion. Despite what is commonly stated on social media by far-right figures and parroted by the media and some political figures, many of the people we are discussing are fleeing awful situations that many of us can only begin to imagine. In this debate, many of their stories are lost or overshadowed by claims that they are trying to cheat the system. That is simply not true.

We know that because almost half the applications for asylum submitted in 2024 were accepted at the initial decision and, of the other half, over 50% were granted on appeal. The overwhelming majority of those seeking asylum in the UK have a legitimate claim in law to be here. For clarification, that means they are not illegal. The UK has a duty under international law to accept and process asylum claims. As someone has already said, we receive far fewer than other European countries. As a signatory of the 1951 UN refugee convention, we must comply with that obligation. I am sure there are people who want to withdraw us from that convention; I hope the day when they have the power to do so never comes.

We also have an obligation under our own legislation—the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999—to house those seeking asylum while they await the outcome of their application. During that time, asylum seekers are not allowed to work. Many of them would want to. Many of them have overcome traumas and travelled to the UK because they want to make a better life for themselves and their families, but our laws prevent them from doing so.

According to Refugee Action, at the end of 2024, 124,802 people were waiting for an initial asylum decision, with 73,866 having waited over six months. That is unnecessary. Although the process has sped up slightly under the new Government, we have to recognise that there are some countries to which we are never going to send people back, so why would we not make the claim process faster? It does not make sense to make those people wait; while they wait, they are unable to work, so the economy is missing out on hundreds of millions every year in tax and national insurance contributions.

If we really wanted to reduce the cost of housing and financial support for people seeking asylum, we could simply give them the right to work and adequately staff the Home Office to handle their claims. We could give local authorities all the millions that we are currently sending to private companies to build and buy social housing. I was pleased to hear my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan) mention that in his opening speech.

Implementing those simple solutions would be much easier than what we are currently doing, but I fear that those solutions are not chosen because it better fits the narrative that has become so popular in our discourse to say that we will ban people from claiming asylum if they came here through so-called illegal means—despite the fact that there are no safe and legal routes for them to come here—and house people in conditions far worse than those they are already in, all while private companies profit. I think that is the wrong narrative. We need to make a positive case and be clear that it is the system that is the issue, not the people.

I want to address the deeply misleading notion, which I was pleased to hear colleagues address, that asylum seekers are staying in luxury accommodation in so-called five-star hotels and being given a top-tier service. That could not be further from the truth. I have visited various types of asylum seeker accommodation in London and across the country, and there is nothing luxurious about it. It is one family per cramped single room, typically of a standard below what anyone would deem acceptable, many with infestations of bedbugs, cockroaches and other vermin. Some would have us believe that asylum seekers are being given hundreds of pounds a week to pay for a luxury lifestyle, but a vulnerable family seeking asylum is given a measly £5.84 a day—just over £40 a week—to live on. That is not a large amount for a family. It is hardly a luxury lifestyle.

The notion that those seeking asylum and refugees make up a significant proportion of people coming to the UK is false. In fact, the opposite is true. Too often those on other visas are conflated with those seeking asylum just to help create a negative narrative. When we have these discussions, it would be helpful for others to highlight that we are talking about a very small proportion of people in the UK’s overall immigration figures and that the crisis is very much fabricated. We should meet our legal and moral duty instead of fuelling a false narrative.

17:35

[Sir Ashley Fox (Bridgwater) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I welcome this debate. My constituents are angry about the increasing number of people crossing the channel in small boats, being rescued by the Royal Navy and brought to Britain, and then being housed in hotels at taxpayers’ expense. Before the election, Labour Members repeated the mantra that they would “smash the gangs” to solve the problem. They presented it as though there was some mysterious solution to cracking down on people smugglers that simply was not being pursued by the previous Government. But in the year since their election, the problem has been getting worse, not better. The number of people crossing the channel is up by 50% on last year. The failure to control our borders makes our country look impotent.

[Chris Murray]

The Home Affairs Committee heard evidence last week from the new Border Security Commander, Martin Hewitt, who told us that he was working to bring together different parts of Government to focus on cross-border activity as a kind of organised crime similar to terrorism. When I pushed him specifically on whether that was new or whether it had been happening under the previous Government, he was very clear that it was a new way of doing things. Does the hon. Gentleman know more than the Border Security Commander about this?

[Sir Ashley Fox]

I hope the Government’s policy is successful. It is just that in the 12 months since they took office, the problem has got worse by 50%. I will explain why. The large numbers of young men we see crossing the channel in small boats are not refugees; they are economic migrants. They have travelled through several safe countries before reaching Calais. The reason that people are prepared to pay to cross the channel in a small boat is that they know that having reached Britain, there is virtually no prospect of their ever being deported. This Government are guilty of self-harm in closing the Rwanda scheme before it started. Had the scheme been allowed to operate and large numbers of those crossing the channel been deported to Rwanda, the economic model of the people smugglers would have been broken. Instead, Labour lets them stay indefinitely.

Labour is increasing the use of hotels in town centres. In June 2024, 29,585 people were in hotels; now, the figure is 32,059. The numbers are going in the wrong direction and we cannot allow that to continue. We should close the asylum hotels and deport illegal migrants.

[Tony Vaughan]

Does the hon. Member accept that under the Conservative Government asylum applications were essentially paused, which had a huge knock-on effect on accommodation costs and the number of people who had to be accommodated, and that that caused the crisis that we are in?

[Sir Ashley Fox]

Of course; that is part of creating a deterrent in which we say to those crossing the channel, “If you enter the country illegally, you will not be entitled to claim asylum and you will be transferred to a third country.” Interestingly, the European Union is now exploring that, and the facilities in Rwanda are currently being used by the United States, so other countries understand the need for a deterrent.

If we want to reduce the number of refugees in hotels and temporary accommodation, we need to change the way we deal with refugees. In my view, Parliament should decide how many refugees Britain accepts each year, exactly as we did with the Syria scheme. We should then provide a safe and legal route for those refugees, who should be taken exclusively from UN refugee camps. At present, we have the morally repugnant situation that millions of people are sitting in refugee camps around the world with no prospect of being rehomed, while those who jump the queue and pay money to get into a small boat are given licence to live in Britain forever. Does the Minister think that is moral? That creates a perverse incentive, which puts lives at risk, funds organised crime and stops us controlling who we let into our country. The Government must reintroduce the deterrent of deporting illegal migrants if they are ever to solve the small boats problem.

17:40

[Danny Beales (Uxbridge and South Ruislip) (Lab)]

Let us be in no doubt: no one in this place believes that the use of hotels to house asylum seekers awaiting immigration decisions is acceptable. It is bad for the taxpayer, it is bad for our communities and, ultimately, it is bad for the asylum seekers themselves; we have heard terrible stories about the conditions that many asylum seekers face in accommodation. I am pleased, therefore, that the Government have rightly pledged to end the use of asylum hotels in this Parliament.

The use of hotels is a symptom of a broader systematic failure of our migration system. Under the last Government, the asylum system descended into chaos. The backlog of asylum cases reached a historic high in the tens of thousands, and asylum hotels popped up in many communities, including in Hillingdon, to house asylum seekers waiting to be processed. At the peak in autumn 2023, 400 hotels were in use, at a cost of almost £9 million a day.

The UK has a proud history of opening its doors to those fleeing violence and persecution. Jewish communities found their home here during the second world war—in my constituency, many Polish service personnel came and joined our Royal Air Force and worked alongside it to fight the Nazi tyranny; the Polish war memorial in South Ruislip reminds us of their contribution to humanity—and, more recently, Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion settled in our towns, villages and cities. Many Ukrainian asylum seekers settled in my constituency. Migration is part of our national story and it has enriched the lives of so many of our constituents in so many ways. I see that regularly in my constituency.

All of us, including those who have come to the UK and themselves call it home, want an immigration system that works fairly and effectively. We want a system that is able to promptly turn away those with no right to be here while treating genuine asylum seekers with the compassion and respect that they deserve. I know that the Government are committed to restoring order to our asylum system and ending the reliance on hotels. That will require rapid action to increase the pace of decision making and the removal of those who are found to be here without due legal cause.

I am pleased that the Government have made substantial progress in reducing the historic backlog. From January to March 2025, we saw the second highest number of initial decisions taken since records began in 2002, and more than double the number taken in the three months before the election. At the same time, the Government’s new immigration enforcement programme has increased removals of people who have no right to be here; the number of people put on flights out of the UK had reached 30,000 by 18 May 2025.

I understand the frustration that many people in Uxbridge and South Ruislip have about the pace of change, and I share their concerns. With almost 3,000 asylum seekers in Hillingdon hotels, we are the local authority most affected by asylum hotels in the whole country, and we feel the impact acutely. I hope that the Home Office will increase its joint working with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to properly resource local communities, local councils and local services and ensure the better management of hotels. Today we have heard terrible stories of profit making and contractors failing to live up to their responsibilities, and I hear them time and again locally, from partners in the community and those in hotels. We have to hold contractors to account for the services they are paid good public money to provide.

I hope that we will also improve and increase our work with the voluntary and community sector, which is stepping up and providing a significant amount of support in increasingly difficult and hostile conditions. A number of voluntary and community sector organisations that provide vital support to refugees and asylum seekers have recently been targeted by protests, with violent and extreme protesters threatening abuse, violence and even arson. That is clearly unacceptable and illegal, and it must be addressed.

It is also important that we provide accurate information in the public domain, and that, as public officials, we seek to lower the temperature and focus on practical solutions and on working together to solve this shared, long-term issue. Unfortunately, in my community, our council, rather than doing that, has hidden behind misinformation and used public resources to amplify fear and disinformation. It is hiding behind asylum seekers and refugees for its own financial failings, putting out communications, with public money, blaming decisions such as the removal of free garden waste collections on asylum seeker pressures, which is clearly not the case, not true and not helpful.

Public financial documents by the council’s independent officers show that the council is approaching bankruptcy because of long-term funding pressures on local government, particularly owing to the last Government underfunding councils, about which my council said very little at the time—I wonder why. It is because of the pressures relating to social care, children’s services and temporary accommodation that local government faces, and financial mismanagement by that council, as well as some immigration pressures. It is vital that we all seek to base things on facts, and on full and frank information, at this time when temperatures are rising and hate is being fuelled. Many of my constituents who have been here for years, and many who were born here, are increasingly facing violence, hatred and abuse in their communities.

Moving forward, I hope that we will close the hotels as quickly as possible, and do so in an effective way. Comments have rightly been made about how we cannot rush forward with simple solutions to this complex problem. We cannot close all the hotels today, as doing so will simply translate into a homelessness and rough sleeping crisis in our communities, sending many thousands of men, women and children on to our streets. That would be morally, legally and practically terrible for our towns and communities.

This Government are making progress; I would like to see us do so as quickly as possible. I assure my Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituents that I understand the seriousness of the matter and am completely supportive of the Government’s efforts to get a grip on the asylum system and ensure that it is just, efficient and shares responsibility fairly across the country.

17:47

[Sarah Pochin (Runcorn and Helsby) (Reform)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I commend those who have signed the two petitions that bring this debate to Westminster Hall. In my constituency, 461 residents signed the petition to shut down the migrant hotels and deport illegal migrants, and 871 residents signed the petition to stop financial support for asylum seekers. That shows how fed up my residents, and people across the country, are with this issue. Make no mistake: it is the biggest issue facing this country at the moment. We talk about our proud history of accommodating and looking after asylum seekers—and that is true—but this is different. We are now facing an invasion, a national security issue and a national emergency.

The current cost to the taxpayer of housing asylum seekers in hotels is estimated to be £6 million a day. That figure is probably way below what it actually costs us. It is well publicised that asylum seekers in these hotels are receiving not only free accommodation, but free food in three meals a day, free pocket money, free cinema tickets, free—in my constituency of Runcorn and Helsby—driving lessons, free mobile phones and free anything else.

[Kevin Bonavia (Stevenage) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Sarah Pochin]

I shall not. We have all seen pictures of asylum seekers hanging out of windows, laughing at the peaceful protests below. This leaves a sour taste in the mouth of the British taxpayer. We know that other European countries are laughing at us with our ridiculously generous asylum policy, and waving asylum seekers through to our shores.

[Bell Ribeiro-Addy]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Sarah Pochin]

I will not. We know that the Americans are despairing at our asylum seeker policies, and are watching our country being overrun. The only people who do not seem concerned are the Government. How does this make us look to the world, and how does it make our loyal British citizens feel? Well, I will tell hon. Members: it makes us look weak. It makes us look like we do not put the British people first, and that has to change. The British people have had enough of seeing their hard-earned money being spent on people who have no right to be here. Financial assistance to these illegal migrants must stop. All illegal migrants currently in this country need to be deported. That is the starting principle of Reform policy.

[Mr Charters]

Is the hon. Lady courageous enough to give way?

[Sarah Pochin]

I will.

[Mr Charters]

Reform UK has mooted the idea of using British overseas territories as part of its asylum processing plans. Would the hon. Lady use this occasion to rule out any asylum processing ever taking place in the Falklands or Gibraltar as part of Reform UK’s policies?

[Sarah Pochin]

No, I will not rule out any possible policy.

[Apsana Begum]

On that point, will the hon. Member give way?

[Sarah Pochin]

No, I am going to continue; I have given way once. Anyone who has come to this country illegally will never be entitled to claim asylum here again.

[Carla Denyer]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Sarah Pochin]

I will make a bit of progress. The immediate action needs to be that all these hotels are closed to illegal migrants, and that they are moved out of the community into holding centres to be processed and sent home. The conditions in which they are held in these processing centres will be humane but not luxurious. There will be no free tickets to theme parks and no free trips out into the community.

I had an asylum hotel—the Daresbury hotel—in my constituency. My campaign in the recent by-election saw the hotel eventually shut down, but the implications of shutting the hotels are that these illegal migrants are dispersed in houses of multiple occupancy in our communities. In Runcorn, we have approximately 900 illegal migrants in 80 HMOs that we know about. Once in those HMOs, they are lost to the authorities, yet still live free at the taxpayers’ expense.

[Tony Vaughan]

From the logic of what the hon. Lady is saying, we would detain everybody—we would put the 102,000 people currently in asylum accommodation in a detention centre. Does she accept that that will cost around £47 billion, which is not credible at all?

[Sarah Pochin]

I accept that we have to start doing something radical that sends a message, will stop people coming to this country, and will stop the pull factors that send people to our shores.

[Bell Ribeiro-Addy]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Sarah Pochin]

No, I am going to continue. We have to stop the incentives to come to this country. We need to protect the public, particularly women and girls, from these sexually active young men currently free to roam our streets.

[Seamus Logan]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Sarah Pochin]

No, I am nearly finished. We need to prioritise our own citizens and stop this betrayal of our culture and our country. To finish, I would like to make this observation. The Home Office has just put out a contract to tender for asylum support and accommodation services to run from 2029 to 2036, so clearly, the Government have no plans to stop these hotels and are, in fact, facilitating them. The Minister can shake his head, but it is there online.

17:55

[Mr Jonathan Brash (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I commend the 1,600 Hartlepool constituents who signed the two petitions that we are debating.

Asylum accommodation is an issue that stirs emotions, and for very good reason. Too often, legitimate concerns are dismissed as being racist or right-wing, and nothing could be further from the truth. Let me be clear: there are indeed those who would seek to sow division and want to weaponise the issue to incite hatred and further their political careers, but for the vast majority of people, being worried about a broken system is not racist or right-wing; they are simply common-sense concerns. People are concerned about their communities, housing, public services and the fairness that underpins our country. Those concerns deserve to be heard and treated with respect.

When I was first elected, my constituency had one of the region’s highest rates of dispersed asylum accommodation. Hartlepool has never had a hotel used for asylum, but we do have housing bought up by the Home Office contractor Mears concentrated in our town centre. Homes that could have gone to local families are instead taken for temporary placements. The system that we inherited of outsourcing to private companies more interested in profits than in people hardwired unfairness into the asylum process. I make this plea to the Minister: please do not renew those contracts, which targeted deprived communities because of their housing costs.

Let me also be clear that we must always play our part. A decent, confident country will always look to help the vulnerable. It is worth noting that, in 2024, the UK had fewer asylum applications than Germany, France, Italy or Spain. But fairness matters, and the fact that there are 46 asylum seekers for every 10,000 people in Hartlepool, compared with just nine per 10,000 in neighbouring County Durham, is simply not fair. Our town has seen major services leave over the past decade. Our A&E closed in 2011 under the Tories. Our custody suite closed in 2019 under the Tories. Our council services were slashed and our schools were underfunded by the Tories, yet we have borne a disproportionate share of responsibility for asylum—thanks to the Tories.

I took this issue directly to Mears and the Home Office last March. I argued that our town could no longer be expected to take the burden of unfairness that this system had produced, and they agreed. They confirmed that no new properties will be procured in Hartlepool for the asylum process and that existing ones will gradually close. We have already seen a drop of 5%. Sending vulnerable people to a place where NHS dental appointments are as rare as unicorns helps no one—not the asylum seeker and not those needing those already stretched services.

The system can work, and one example where the results are extraordinary is the Salaam community centre in Hartlepool, led by the magnificent Nancy Pout. It supports asylum seekers to become integrated into our town. I have personally witnessed the compassion and decency at the heart of that organisation, with asylum seekers volunteering to give back to our community. When riots led by thugs and criminals attacking local businesses and destroying Hartlepool property took place last year, it was the Salaam centre and its army of volunteers that took to the streets the next morning to clean up the mess. Its volunteers and staff come together time and again to work as an integrated community, celebrating our achievements.

The message is simple: we cannot impose further pressure on deprived communities that are already struggling. Let us also be honest that those posing as asylum seekers for economic gain damage trust and make life harder for genuine refugees. That must also be addressed. If they have no right to be here, they must be removed. But this debate should not be about being for or against asylum; it should be about fairness—fairness for those seeking refuge and fairness for the communities asked to do their bit to host them.

[Richard Tice (Boston and Skegness) (Reform)]

The hon. Member speaks passionately about the great town of Hartlepool, which I know well. He made a key point: our nation has always been very compassionate towards genuine asylum seekers. Under the previous Labour Government, some 20 years ago, the average number of asylum seekers was in the order of 20,000 to 30,000 a year, and they came legally. That is the crux of it: they came under legal and safe routes, and the country could absorb them. The hon. Member made a point about fairness; the current system is unfair, and too many of those now coming illegally are actually economic migrants as opposed to genuine asylum seekers.

[Mr Brash]

The hon. Gentleman does know my constituency quite well—I would not say very well, if we are honest about the short time he spent there—and he makes an interesting point. This is the second time that we have interacted on this issue and that he has eulogised the previous Labour Government, and I obviously welcome that once more. I also welcome his advocacy for free and safe routes, which I hope are now Reform policy—I look forward to that. He is right: the system is unfair; the system is broken, and it incentivises perverse behaviour and perverse levels of pressure on communities like mine. The critical thing is that if we get the balance right in our system, we will see stories of integration and hope. The current system leaves communities feeling abandoned and overwhelmed, and that cannot continue.

18:04

[Mr Peter Bedford (Mid Leicestershire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I thank the hundreds of Mid Leicestershire residents who took the time to sign the two petitions. I want to speak directly to each and every one of them: you are absolutely right to sign, and you should not feel ashamed, belittled or even embarrassed for doing so; your views come from a deep sense of national pride, a strong belief in the rule of law and, above all, a commitment to fairness. They reflect a widespread feeling that the immigration system is failing. It is failing law-abiding British citizens, the British taxpayer and the integrity of our borders. We in this place must do better. Today, I proudly stand with my constituents, who deserve better.

[Sir John Hayes in the Chair]

It is deeply disrespectful to the hard-working families in Mid Leicestershire and across the UK—who get up early, work long hours, pay their taxes and contribute to society—that individuals who come here illegally stay in hotels with access to three meals a day, healthcare and all the other benefits. Meanwhile, my constituents are struggling with the cost of living, and watching their purse strings tighten month after month. That is not sustainable, and it is simply not fair.

We must put an end to this open-door policy, which is placing unbearable pressure on our welfare system, public services and communities. We must close the hotels and deport those who are taking advantage of our system. It really is that simple—we just need a Government with the gumption to do it. As a country, we cannot continue to spend £6 million on these hotels every single day. Our once-great nation—the nation of the NHS, world-class education and the rule of law—is choosing to spend billions on illegal migrants. That is money that could be better invested in our schools, police and hospitals. Hotels that once welcomed tourists to showcase the best of Britain are now occupied by individuals who in many cases have no respect for our borders, culture or rule of law, all while veterans sleep on the streets, local economies die and housing waiting lists grow rapidly. The system simply is not fair, and it is not what the British people voted for.

What did we get from the Government in response to the petitions? Bluster, what-aboutery and a clear lack of understanding. Governments of all colours have made mistakes on migration over the past 40 years. Many new MPs, particularly on the Conservative Benches, have articulated this point brilliantly to those Members who were in the House before us.

I know that the Leader of the Opposition gets this and has a plan. First, we will end the endless lawfare surrounding illegal migration. Then, as some Members have expressed it, we will deport, deport, deport. It really is that simple. The Conservative party is united in its commitment to leave the European convention on human rights and the European convention against trafficking and repeal the Human Rights Act 1998.

[Tony Vaughan]

Does the hon. Gentleman believe that withdrawing from those conventions will actually make those things easier? There is no basis for saying so. The truth is that we need those agreements to solve the problem—the deal with France is the start of this process of having a returns agreement again.

[Mr Bedford]

Many of these agreements were established 50, 60 or 70 years ago, in a completely different world. They are completely outdated and are not applicable to modern Britain. With regard to the hon. and learned Member’s comment about the returns agreement, which has been mentioned by other hon. Members, when an agreement was in place before Brexit, we were a net recipient, so his argument simply does not hold water.

Time and again, these outdated frameworks have been used by activist do-gooders to block any form of deportation. We will never have control of our borders and do what the petitioners have asked for until we leave these conventions. A clean withdrawal from them will enable a future Government to act in a tough but fair manner for the people of Great Britain. We will not be deterred by woke protests or sneering lectures from the chattering classes; we will secure our borders and we will restore fairness.

And that is not all. A future Conservative Government will establish a dedicated removal force with real power and financial backing. That force will deport all illegal migrants within seven days of arrival, to ensure that foreign criminals have no place in the UK and to stop economic migrants abusing our system. Ultimately, we must put the British people first and restore fairness to the system.

Yes, my words today have been direct; they have been stark. That is because every petitioner from my constituency has had enough—I have had enough. It is time to stop the lawfare, deport those who have no right to be here, and restore confidence and fairness to our immigration system.

18:07

[Kevin Bonavia (Stevenage) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir John. I am grateful to my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan) for leading the debate.

I think that all of us in the Chamber agree on one point: hotels are simply not the right place to house anyone seeking asylum. They are used as hostels; they are also in areas people feel very uncomfortable about. That is all clear to us. They are not homes; they do not offer the stability or dignity that people need to rebuild their lives. Nor do they allow proper access to services or integration into our communities, to which many asylum seekers wish to contribute.

As we have heard from many Members, the impact of the current situation is felt locally. Public services are under pressure. Hard-working local taxpayers feel left out of the conversation. Those seeking asylum, who have often fled conflict, persecution and trauma, are left in a state of uncertainty and are unable to move forward with their lives. Tension is rising, protests ensue, fear is stoked, concerns are weaponised, communities feel demonised and the dream of the tolerant, diverse Britain that we know and love comes under threat.

However, let me be clear: I am not and will never be the type of politician who exists only to be against something. Neither I nor many other Members came into politics to cause tension, stoke fear and weaponise concerns. That is the cheap and easy route—promising the quick fantasy fix. That is the politics of weakness. I came into politics to get stuck into the difficult business of being for a solution. I can reject the use of hotels for asylum seekers and understand concerns about managing immigration levels fairly, while also rejecting those who wish to spin this broken record for votes until the sun goes down. It is time to roll up our sleeves collectively and fix this mess together.

Let me remind all Members here today that the previous Conservative Government created this problem. The hon. Member for Bridgwater (Sir Ashley Fox), who is no longer in his place, talked about the Rwanda scheme.

[Richard Tice]

The hon. Member speaks passionately about all of us being keen to close down the hotels, including those in my constituency of Boston and Skegness. He talks about being for things, so is he for moving asylum seekers who are here illegally into houses in multiple occupation, or is he for moving them into processing centres in remote locations, as Reform suggests?

[Kevin Bonavia]

As I will come to later in my remarks, I am for reducing and speeding up the whole processing system and for finding more appropriate places than hotels—there are a multitude of those, and I am sure the Minister will set out where we get to on that. The point is that we should all agree that we need to have a fair system. It needs to be fast and to deal with genuine asylum seekers. Unfortunately, we currently have a broken system.

Returning to what the previous Conservative Government were apparently trying to do with their Rwanda system, they never gave us or themselves a chance to see that one through. They knew perfectly well that it was not working out and they got themselves into all kinds of knots.

We hear calls for leaving conventions. People blamed the European Union, but we left the European Union with a hard Brexit and immigration has gone up, so they go and find something else: the European convention on human rights. When that does not work, what is next? The refugee convention. While we are throwing all those rights out the door, it will be, “Well, we don’t need any of that stuff. Who cares about freedom from torture? Who cares about these rights for all of us in this country?” Talking about so-called outdated laws is not the solution. We need far more practical solutions. The answer is to co-operate with our neighbours. This is not a British problem; this is a European and a worldwide problem. If we treat it as a British problem, we will never, ever get the solution.

Other Members in this room seek to weaponise this issue for their own ends. It suits them to scaremonger about what is happening, I attempted to intervene on the hon. Member for Runcorn and Helsby (Sarah Pochin) to ask where her evidence was for all that she said. Those of us who try to look at the facts are dealing with fake news. Some people online on social media will not look at mainstream media or trust journalists who look for second sources, but will happily share a faked video. That is what is happening now: fearmongering and scaremongering from parties like Reform that thrive on division and hate. Give me evidence—that is all I ask. I want genuine evidence, not the fake news that we get on social media, with all the fake videos out there.

I welcome the much more sensible and practical approach of this Government. The British people are a practical and pragmatic people who believe in fairness, as do this Labour Government. That is why I welcome the beginning of the returns agreement with our neighbour France. France has a major issue with illegal migration and asylum as well. So does Germany. So does Malta, the country I was born in. People say that we live on a small island; Malta is a small island, much smaller than here. This is not just a British problem. We have to work together to find solutions, rather than running away from rules and clubs just because we do not like them and will not play that game.

The agreement with France signals a more constructive approach. What is needed is co-operation, because we have a shared responsibility. Of course, that initiative is not a silver bullet, but it is a practical step forward, unlike using our overseas territories to host people. The hon. Member for Runcorn and Helsby did not rule out the use of the Falklands. Islands that we fought so hard for in 1982, against Argentine invasion, are now apparently going to be used for dispersal. She did not rule it out when she was asked to do so—it is under consideration.

[Sarah Pochin]

Now he is twisting things.

[Kevin Bonavia]

I am happy to take an intervention from the hon. Lady, if she wishes. By working with our European partners and other countries we can better manage arrivals, reduce pressure on local services and ensure that those seeking asylum are treated with fairness and dignity. Co-operation must be more than simply operational, however; it means tackling the criminal networks that exploit vulnerable people and ensuring that our asylum system is efficient and humane.

Our communities want clarity. They want to know that the system is working, not just for those who come here in search of safety, but for our local communities. That starts with policies that build on partnership, not posturing. While I will always bang the drum for safer and stronger border management, I do not want us to turn our backs on those in need or give up on the multicultural Britain we know and love.

Britain has long been a place of refuge and opportunity. We have heard about the 250,000 Belgians this country gave refuge to in the first world war, the Windrush generation and the frontline workers who kept our NHS going during the pandemic. Immigrants have always played a vital role in shaping our country for better. We have a legal and a moral responsibility to support those fleeing persecution. That means building an asylum system that is fair, efficient and humane, and one that does not leave people waiting in limbo for years.

At the same time, we must be firm where it matters. If someone comes to this country and breaks our laws, they should be removed. That is not about prejudice; it is about protecting the integrity of our system and the safety of our communities. It is something that those who come here legally, and contribute greatly, wholeheartedly support—fairness matters to us all. That balanced approach must guide us.

We need to move away from the use of hotels, which were never designed for long-term accommodation. We must continue the work of clearing the backlog so that decisions are made swiftly and fairly. We must deepen our partnerships with international allies to address the drivers of migration, which affect all countries, at their source. With that in mind, I ask the Minister how and when local authorities will be notified that hotels in their area are being returned to public use, and what support will be provided to ensure a smooth transition for both our local communities and all those applying for asylum?

18:17

[Carla Denyer (Bristol Central) (Green)]

I must congratulate the hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan) on an excellent, compelling and evidence-based opening speech of the debate. I declare my membership, alongside him, of the all-party parliamentary group on refugees.

The petitions call for three main things. They call for asylum hotels to be shut immediately, for people in hotels to be deported, and for all support—including food, shelter and medical assistance—to be denied.

Migration is a basic human thing to do. People move. Our earliest ancestors did it, and most of us have moved at some point during our lives, in search of work or a better life, or for love. Most of us, though, are lucky enough to have had to flee for our lives, as many of those in asylum hotels have done. Whether we have travelled from Leicester to London or from Afghanistan to Aberdeen, moving is a part of life. Refugees, a small proportion of the total migration into this country, are forced to move. The chance for them to seek asylum is a lifeline at the heart of British values and democracy.

Asylum hotels work for no one. The Government want to end their use, as they are hugely expensive. They are also completely unsuitable for men, women and children who have endured and fled unimaginable trauma. However, hotels are being used in the immediate term because the last Government deliberately created a massive backlog of destitute people when they stopped assessing asylum claims.

Successive Governments—sadly, including this one—have sought to make life needlessly difficult for people seeking sanctuary. Hotel accommodation for destitute asylum seekers is given on a no-choice basis. Rooms in hotels are often shared and cramped, with nowhere to cook and no privacy, and often leave vulnerable people isolated and depressed. Asylum seekers have no recourse to public funds, meaning that they are not eligible for mainstream benefits and, in most cases, are banned from working. They are trapped by a malfunctioning Home Office—a bloated institution that should be broken up, as recommended in a report that I commissioned a few months ago called “No Way Home”.

Turning to the proposal to deport those seeking asylum: that is immoral. We have provided sanctuary for decades under international conventions, because protecting people from torture and death reflects core British values of generosity, compassion and care—values that our grandparents fought and died for in world war two. They are values that are upheld every day in my Bristol Central constituency, where we are proud to be a city of sanctuary, where our wonderful schools welcome everyone as equal and valued members of their school communities, and where the Bristol Refugee Festival and amazing organisations such as the Bristol Hospitality Network, Moveable Feast, Aid Box Community and the Dovetail Orchestra—to name but a few—work to connect, share and celebrate together. Far-right groups do not like it, but Bristol stands firmly for dignity, inclusion and hope.

The real problem is inequality, not immigration. In billionaire Britain, 4.5 million children are growing up in poverty. Meanwhile, the top 50 richest families in the UK now hold more wealth than the poorest half of the population, which is over 34 million people. There are now over 172,000 children living in temporary accommodation, while wealth from property and inheritance has soared. It is patently not those destitute people who have fled for their lives, and who are now stuffed into inappropriate accommodation and forced to live on £9.95 a week, who are to blame for any of that.

We need fairer taxation. We need wealth taxes so that those with the broadest shoulders can pay their fair share. We need a plan to make migration actually work for all of us. I urge the Government to act on the Refugee Council’s proposal that would allow Ministers to close asylum hotels within a year. It recommends a one-off scheme to give time-limited permission to stay, subject to suitably rigorous security checks, to people from countries that make them almost certain to be recognised as refugees. The system should also provide safe and legal routes for people to seek sanctuary, so that they are not pushed into the hands of people smugglers, and we must end the ban on asylum seekers working. Let them contribute. Those are the real ways to undermine the black economy and create integrated communities.

Ending the scandal of poverty and inequality is critical, starting—please—with scrapping the awful two-child benefit cap and taxing billionaires properly. It is time to share out the great wealth that we have in this country to provide reliable and accessible public services that are run for the public good and that we can all benefit from. We must reject the politics of division and hate, and make hope normal again.

18:23

[Euan Stainbank (Falkirk) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John. My contribution will focus exclusively on the asylum system and the impact that my community has seen. Falkirk has been a host community for asylum seekers over the last few years. I have met people from Ukraine, the middle east and the horn of Africa, many of whom have fled war and persecution across the globe. As many Members have said, we do not have a system that works for communities such as Falkirk, or for those who are hosted here.

The community I represent is suffering from a legacy of unfit hotel accommodation. Since 2021, the Cladhan hotel in Falkirk has been used by the Home Office. Those housed there have been helped by excellent community groups and charities that have commendably hosted initiatives to help with successful integration. Those people claiming asylum whom I have met simply want to live their lives peacefully, while contributing to the community. Despite the restrictions, they do so, but for too long—sometimes for years—they have languished on waiting lists.

However, I will not ignore the fact that concerns in my community have been heightened since a vile crime was committed in October 2023 by Sadeq Nikzad. Many in my community were unaware of the use of the Cladhan hotel. Mr Nikzad raped a 15-year-old girl. It was a revolting crime. He also, shamefully, defended himself in court by trying—and failing—to mitigate his crime on the basis that he did not understand cultural differences. That was wrong. Anyone who was disgusted by his crime or by his defence was not wrong. Everybody I have met in my community, of all cultures, was disgusted at his crime. The Government have since acted through clause 48 of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill, which disapplies refugee protections from those who have committed serious crimes such as his.

That said, Mr Nikzad is not representative of those fleeing persecution who live in my community, just as the criminals from Falkirk who are currently incarcerated for similarly serious sexual offences are not representative of people from Falkirk. The violence and intimidation that we have seen rise in the Falkirk community is wrong. The recent throwing of a brick through a window of the Cladhan, without regard or care for the human lives inside, is not an action of any of the people I have met who are positively contributing to the community, many of whom have expressed to me their legitimate concerns about the asylum system. Banners seen at protests encouraging people to “Kill ’em all and let God sort ’em out” are wrong and contrary to our community’s values.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Danny Beales), who is no longer in his place, very aptly said, it is up to us as politicians to focus on solutions to the issues that our constituents identify, and not to use our platform to inflame, misinform or omit. Community fury was recently directed at a new hotel development that, it turned out, was not and would never be permitted as asylum accommodation. That was a fact that many in the community could have chosen to publicise, and I chose to work with the company to publicise it, but others chose instead to fuel speculation.

Asylum hotels in this country will close only when processing speeds up to meet the significant demand and backlogs that built up over nearly half a decade of substantially high irregular migration. Processing had effectively stopped under the previous Government, as they opted for the unworkable Rwanda scheme and told my community that they were building a temporary asylum hotel in our community, when they were actually using it to manage their backlog and abandon people in the system and in our communities for years instead of improving processing. The dropping of the target to reach decisions within six months has preceded the saga of many people I have met being left in communities for years while they wait on an initial decision.

In stark contrast to the Opposition’s programme when they were in government, this Government have intervened on processing the number of asylum seekers—and it has fallen. The Refugee Council calculated that, thanks to this Government’s interventions, there were 59,000 fewer people in the system at the start of 2025 than there would have been had the system been left as it was under the previous Government. Processing in quarter 2 of 2025 was 116% higher for initial decisions than in quarter 2 of 2024.

The bill to the taxpayer, which has been discussed today, has also decreased. The cost of hotels is £5.77 million per day—still substantially too high, but down from £8.3 million per day last year. This Government will be the one who end asylum hotels, and they will do so through a sustainable system of processing. However, we must provide greater transparency on when this will lead to asylum hotels being closed in specific communities; I will ask a question for my hon. Friend the Minister to address when he sums up.

Getting rid of my constituents’ human rights under the European convention on human rights would not work either; as many Members have said, it would undermine the vital international agreements that we need to rebuild a coherent asylum system, as it is not working at the moment. We need a system that works so that we can properly fulfil our legal and moral obligation to those who come to this country, fleeing war and persecution, and is fulfilled in an appropriate way, with the consent and support of host communities—something that has not happened in Falkirk.

The Minister will be aware that Falkirk council and I are corresponding extensively with them regarding the concerns rising in our community. We have been raising concerns from the community that were also raised through a public engagement forum that I, Falkirk council and Police Scotland Forth Valley hosted on 19 September.

I would appreciate it if, in the Minister’s response, he could address the following points: how the ongoing programme of asylum hotel closures will be timetabled equitably across each of the regions and nations of the United Kingdom; what work he is doing to resource community cohesion efforts alongside local authorities and how effectively the Home Office public protection team and the local authority asylum liaison officers are performing and what requirements they are given to liaise with local authorities.

Can the Minister address whether consideration has been given to support local authorities in meeting broader housing need, which remains unmet for far too many of my constituents enduring Scotland’s housing crisis? If any break clauses in contracts with operators are not taken up by the Home Office, what obligations will the Home Office put on these providers to compel them to engage with local communities? That was not done under the previous Government, and it is the stem of many of the issues we now see in Falkirk and across the country.

18:30

[Mr Paul Kohler (Wimbledon) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir John. I congratulate the hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan) on leading this important debate. I begin by declaring an interest: a previous donor to my election campaign has an interest in Stay Belvedere Hotels, a sub-contractor of Clearsprings, which is one of the three principal providers of asylum accommodation under the Home Office contract. I am also a member of the Home Affairs Committee, which recently completed an inquiry into asylum accommodation and will be issuing its report later this month. Although I will not be speaking in my capacity as a member of that Committee or revealing conclusions from the forthcoming report, I will make reference during my speech to evidence given to the Committee in open session that is already in the public domain.

As we have heard, the British taxpayer is wasting obscene amounts of money on the provision of asylum accommodation, not through generosity, but because of the incompetence and cynicism of the previous Conservative Government and the failure of the current Labour Administration, I am afraid, to address those deficiencies. The processing of applications was deliberately delayed under the Tories as they sought to make political capital from their flawed Rwanda scheme. According to the latest figures, nearly 90,000 applications are outstanding in respect of 110,000 people, with 60% having waited over six months and one third over a year. That represents a huge waste of public money, which is why my party is calling for the establishment of nightingale processing centres to clear the backlog within a year, paid for by an immediate and dramatic reduction in accommodation costs, which are far too high, particularly in respect of hotels.

Why are hotel costs so high? As I have seen, it is not as if the accommodation is luxurious, with two or three to a room in hotels that have turned into overcrowded hostels. The cost is so high because the Conservative Government agreed contracts that gave the three principal providers of asylum accommodation huge incentives to house applicants in hotels. The profit clawback clause in the contract was based on a fixed percentage of the cost of the accommodation provided. As the base cost of a hotel accommodation is up to eight times more expensive than other accommodation, providers could make up to eight times the profit before the clause kicked in. The private providers consequently had a huge disincentive to move applicants out of hotels after the pandemic ended, and that is why more than 30,000 are still in hotels. Despite what the Government say in the media, those numbers are again on the rise, with the latest figures showing an 8% increase in the number of applicants housed in hotels in the last 12 months.

The flawed accommodation contract is the reason why Clearsprings’ profits rose from £6,000 per employee in 2020 to a staggering £300,000 per employee in 2024. Yet, when I asked about the profit clawback clause during a Home Affairs Committee evidence session, it was clear that neither the Minister—not this Minister, I hasten to add, but his predecessor—nor her senior officials even knew how the profit clawback clause worked. Neither did they show any appetite for renegotiating the provision or any great enthusiasm for exiting the contracts, despite a break clause that becomes operative from next year.

In addition to the hugely inflated costs of providing accommodation, asylum seekers are an excessive drain on the public purse because, unlike in other countries, those awaiting a decision in the UK are banned from working for at least a year. In contrast, Canada allows applicants to begin working immediately, and Germany after three months. The UK stands as an absolute outlier in taking such a restrictive approach, despite evidence showing that early work boosts integration and the economy, reduces dependency, restores dignity and saves taxpayers money. The UK’s current position is indefensible, which is why the Lib Dems have joined with many groups in civil society in calling for an end to the ban.

The asylum system is failing both those who seek refuge and the public who fund it. Endless delays, costly hotels and flawed contracts provide neither justice nor value for money. We need faster processing, an end to the ban and an accommodation system that does not allow the private sector to make obscene profits. Finally, I remind hon. Members that undocumented migrants became an issue only with the advent of Brexit. Under the Dublin accord, would-be applicants could be returned to their first point of entry into the EU. In answer to the point that the Tories have kept making this afternoon, it acted as a huge disincentive to crossing the channel.

While the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) fathered Brexit, his friends in the Conservative party delivered it and Labour sadly chose to be its nursemaid. They vowed to make Brexit work, but it appears today, in reports from across the Atlantic, that the Chancellor is finally seeing that that might not be possible. I asked the UK Border Security Commander at the Home Affairs Committee last week if he could give me just one example of how Brexit had secured our borders, and he was unable to do so, as can be seen on TikTok. That is why the only way to properly secure our borders is to re-engage with Europe.

18:35

[Chris Murray (Edinburgh East and Musselburgh) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir John. I draw the Chamber’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Interests and the support that my office receives from the Refugee, Asylum and Migration Policy Project. This is a really important debate, and I congratulate my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan) on his eloquent introduction to this difficult issue.

The previous speaker, the hon. Member for Wimbledon (Mr Kohler), alluded to the fact that the Home Affairs Committee has undertaken an inquiry into asylum accommodation and a report is coming out on Monday. I will be speaking in a personal capacity as well, but there may be some overlap in our conclusions. One thing that was patently clear to us as we undertook a 15-month inquiry into asylum accommodation was that it has been a complete disaster. It has been disastrous for the local communities where asylum seekers are being housed and for the local authorities that are trying to provide services. It has been disastrous for asylum seekers; we found numerous pieces of evidence of safeguarding issues. It has also been disastrous for the public purse. It has cost an unbelievable amount of money, considering the terrible externalities it has created.

How did we end up in this situation? Asylum is not a new concept. The UK has faced asylum challenges for decades, but until six years ago we never had asylum hotels. It is clear to me, based on the 10 years for which I worked on asylum issues before coming to this House and my last 15 months on the Home Affairs Committee, that we must follow the money. The smoking gun in this scenario is the asylum contracts that the Conservative Government signed in 2019, when they handed over all responsibility and discretion to three private providers.

That has cost £7 billion of taxpayers’ money, of which hundreds of millions have gone on profits, but there is no effective oversight of these contracts by the Home Office, no holding the providers to account for failure and no grip on spiralling costs. There has been poor management of where public money is spent, and, as the hon. Member for Wimbledon said, poor use has been made of clawback clauses.

The providers would argue that they have never breached the profit share that the Conservatives baked into the contract at 7%, but as costs spiralled following the pandemic and the disastrous Rwanda scheme, they had every incentive to move people into hotels and keep them there. As the clear financial incentive grew, the Conservative Government put nothing in place to stop the runaway train. One of the owners even entered The Sunday Times rich list. Over the weekend, The Times covered reports of a property owner bragging on TikTok from Dubai about how easy it is to get rich by leasing his properties to Mears, Clearsprings and Serco. We have also seen real scandals in the Clearsprings subprime supply chain, about which there still needs to be more transparency.

The asylum accommodation contracts are a public procurement failure of the highest order. They were signed in 2019 by the Conservative Government, and they are fully that Government’s responsibility. The scandal is why they did nothing to derail the train when they could see it coming. The worst part is that we have nothing to show for that £7 billion of taxpayers’ money. It has gone on receipts to hotels and profits for private providers. We have no buildings or new social housing; we have nothing about which the public can say, “At least we got this as we accommodated asylum seekers.” I do not know about other Members, but I think about what could have been done if I had been given the share of that money for my city of Edinburgh and asked to look after asylum seekers and invest in housing stock. The things the Conservatives could have done with that money had they been able to get a more effective grip on public spending!

The Conservatives locked the country into these asylum contracts in 2019. It is a crowded field, but I think that is one of their most appalling legacies. Next year, as has been alluded to, is the break clause, where the Government have the opportunity to substantially rewrite or break these asylum contracts at no penalty. My questions to the Minister are: what is the Home Office’s assessment of how these contracts have been handled so far? What is his view of how Home Office officials have managed the contracts and their capacity to get a grip on them? Is he looking at the break clause and thinking about whether he should use it?

It may sound a bit technical and dry, on such an emotive issue, to be focusing on contracts, procurements and supply chains, but I have always believed that the role of Government is to drill down into the nuts and bolts, deal with manifest failures and make the system work. That is what I think the petitioners are asking us to do—not to posture, to grandstand or to use inflammatory rhetoric, but to solve the problem. We can do that by getting a grip on these asylum contracts.

[Sir John Hayes (in the Chair)]

We now move to the wind-ups. We have plenty of time, not that that is an invitation for speeches of an undue length. Members should keep it poignant but pithy. In that spirit, I call the Liberal Democrat spokesman, Will Forster.

18:41

[Mr Will Forster (Woking) (LD)]

It is clear from both the petitions that people across the country are angry and frustrated about the state of our asylum system. The Liberal Democrats understand why people have signed the petitions. The situation has been badly mishandled for years, and in my opinion the petitioners are right to call it out. We should not have 30,000 people in asylum hotels, nor should we have a backlog of 90,000 asylum cases. We certainly should not be spending £6 million every day on asylum accommodation.

Despite the chaos in the asylum system, we know that immigration brings huge benefits to this country. Contrary to what we have heard from some Conservative and Reform Members today, people are more likely to be treated by an immigrant in the NHS than they are to be behind one in the queue for treatment. We should recognise the value that refugees have given to our country. In Woking, more than 500 refugees have settled locally in the last 10 years, whether that be from Afghanistan, Syria or Ukraine.

Among those refugees was the Shafaee family, who resettled in Woking in 2021 after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan. The father now works as a BBC journalist, translating world news for regional audiences. That former asylum seeker is playing his part in expanding this country’s soft power, and countering fake news and misinformation from our rivals in Russia, China and other countries. Their children are doing amazingly well and excelling in education. The oldest daughter, Asma, secured a two-year scholarship to study in a sixth form that many in this Chamber would not have been bright enough to get into. Their youngest daughter, Marwa, is such an amazing art student that she has had her paintings displayed at Woking railway station. That family alone highlights the value of refugees and of us supporting them. That support has helped that family, my constituency and our country.

I am proud of the role that refugees are playing in Woking, but the system is still a mess. Why did it get like that? Because the Conservatives lost control of our borders. They deliberately slowed the claims process, saying that that would act as a deterrent. That failed. After Brexit, both channel crossings and immigration went up, not down. The Conservatives’ failure has cost taxpayers billions of pounds and increased community tensions. They spent more than £700 million on Rwanda, and that policy sent only a few refugees to the country.

In the last financial year, the Home Office spent around £4 billion on asylum support, including more than £2 billion on hotel accommodation. According to the National Audit Office, hotels accounted for more than three quarters of the total cost of asylum accommodation while housing only a third of asylum seekers. Hotel use has been appalling value for money. Under the Conservative Government, the private sector started to make a fortune out of contracts to protect our border, while clearly not delivering. Other hon. Members have talked about hotel profits, so I will move on.

According to the Refugee Council, at its height in 2022 the trade in people smuggling was worth around £230 million to the smugglers themselves, yet just one contract for border security, which lasted two years, was worth £1 billion. As a country, we have spent an inordinate amount of money compared with what the smugglers are making—even the 10th most expensive contract was worth more than £65 million. This industry is leeching off our country, and some people are going after asylum seekers and refugees while not criticising those businesses. We have effectively privatised protecting our borders, but those companies are making a shedload while not solving the problem. It is actually in their best interest not to solve the problem and still to take taxpayers’ money.

It is not just the Conservatives who are responsible for this dire crisis. To the hon. Members for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice) and for Runcorn and Helsby (Sarah Pochin), and above all to the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage), I say that their politics is causing this problem. After Brexit, we no longer have the European Union’s Dublin rules, so we can no longer automatically send people back to Europe. The Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford has called that the Brexit effect: asylum seekers are trying to reach the UK because they know they cannot be returned. As a result, small boat crossings have gone up significantly since the post-Brexit deal. While Reform causes problems and blames everyone else, we Liberal Democrats actually have an antidote to the problem, and we will happily vaccinate the country against the populism that Reform is spouting.

Turning to Labour, the Government need to go further and faster to reduce channel crossings and cut the cost of asylum hotels. Earlier this year, they had an opportunity to reduce the bill. We tabled an amendment to the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill to lift the ban on asylum seekers working. If we talked to many of our constituents, they would be frustrated that we are spending so much money on asylum hotels, yet banning asylum seekers from working.

We must be honest about the right to work. Allowing asylum seekers to work after three months would reduce the burden on taxpayers and help them to build a stake in their new society. Instead of being trapped in limbo and relying on Government support, they could be contributing to our local economies. It is common sense to let people build their own lives, not rely on a state—let alone a new state—to offer accommodation and measly benefits. If Labour, the Conservatives and Reform had voted for the amendment, we would have lowered the burden on the taxpayer. Reform says it wants to solve the problem, but it threw in its lot with the political establishment by voting against that proposal.

In Australia, most asylum seekers have the right to work straightaway, although it is temporary. In Canada, they can apply for a work permit while their asylum application is processed. The US allows asylum seekers to work after six months. From June next year, the EU will require member states to let asylum seekers work after nine months, while some go further: Sweden allows them to work straightaway. Our one-year restriction is out of kilter with the rest of the world. The Minister was not in his position when we debated the border Bill, but will he reconsider the ban now that he is in post, or at least reduce its length so it is more comparable with those in other countries?

This problem can be tackled, and the Liberal Democrats have set out a clear five-point plan to fix the broken system. I pay tribute to my hon. Friends the Members for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), for Horsham (John Milne), for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord), for Wokingham (Clive Jones) and for Wimbledon (Mr Kohler) for speaking today and highlighting some of that plan.

First, we would lead global action to stop the smuggling and trafficking gangs that profit from human misery. This is an international problem and needs international co-operation, and Britain should be leading that effort once again. Secondly, we would process applications swiftly and deport those with no right to stay. The best deterrent to dangerous crossings is an efficient and fair system that makes quick decisions and enforces them properly. Thirdly, we would crack down on modern slavery here in the UK. Trafficking gangs bring people here to exploit them with forced labour. We must get the Fair Work Agency up and running and bring those responsible for that exploitation to justice.

Fourthly, we would invest to support refugees closer to their home countries. Most people fleeing conflict want to stay near their home, but our aid budget, which would help people to do that, has been cut by both the Conservatives and Labour, who are then surprised that we have small boat crossings in such record numbers. Restoring that support—that international aid—would help to save lives and reduce those dangerous crossings across Europe, in the Mediterranean, and closer to home in the English channel.

Finally, we would allow asylum seekers to apply from outside the United Kingdom, whether at our embassies or consulates or through other initiatives, so that people can travel safely if they are granted protection, rather than risking their lives at sea. How successful has the Ukrainian visa scheme been, given we have had almost no Ukrainians make an illegal crossing? We need to have safe, legal routes.

That is what a fair deal on the asylum and immigration system would look like. It would save taxpayer money, restore public confidence and uphold Britain’s proud tradition of offering sanctuary to those fleeing persecution. Reform, like many of the private sector companies that I have already highlighted, has a perverse incentive to keep the migration crisis going. It wants all attempts to stop the boats to fail so it can continue to profit politically from the crisis. It wants migrants to come across so that the country stays cross. The remedies it is selling would make the quacks of old blush—these snake oil salesmen are not to be trusted.

To the people of my Woking constituency and to others across the country who signed these petitions, I say this: I am sorry that Conservative mismanagement has broken our system, that Reform’s Brexit tore up the Dublin rules that stopped the channel crossings in the first place, and that Labour’s border Bill does not solve the problem. That is why we have come up with a plan. The Liberal Democrats have an antidote to this crisis.

18:52

[Katie Lam (Weald of Kent) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir John. I thank the Petitions Committee, my constituency neighbour, the hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan), for presenting these petitions, and the hundreds of thousands of people who have made their voices heard by signing them. Despite the clear wishes of the British people, successive Governments of different parties have failed to control immigration, both legal and illegal. This is a complete scandal and is probably the single biggest reason for the declining trust in our politics.

It is a particular scandal that, as an island nation, we have failed to stop people from coming to this country illegally, as my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp) rightly said. Since the small boats crisis began in 2018, nearly 200,000 people have come to Britain via that route. In 2025 alone, more than 35,000 people have made the crossing. On arrival, more than 95% of those people have claimed asylum, and having done so, they are afforded generous support, including direct cash transfers. Often, they are placed in hotels, where they can pose a risk to local people, particularly men posing a risk to women and girls. We have already heard about one such horrifying case from the hon. Member for Falkirk (Euan Stainbank) today, and I am sorry to say that there are many more.

Illegal migrants can stay in the asylum system for years, launching endless appeals. Increasingly, our system is approving asylum claims on the thinnest of grounds. The incentives are clear: come to Britain and be fed, housed and given full healthcare and money to spend, all funded by the British taxpayer. If the Government were really serious about ending the small boats crisis, they would put a stop to asylum support and close the hotels as these petitions request. Those who have arrived here illegally would be sent back to their home country, if it is safe for them to go, or to a third country. Those who make the crossing in future should be detained and swiftly removed. Anybody who arrives here illegally must never be able to apply for asylum.

This is a generous country, as many hon. Members have said this afternoon—remarkably so—but allowing access to Britain to tens and tens of thousands of young men who are willing to break our laws by coming here from the safety of France is not generosity. It is unfair, unaffordable, democratically illegitimate and dangerous. British taxpayers must not foot the bill for a crisis that they have voted to stop and that was created here in Westminster. We can end it, and we must.

My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Leicestershire (Mr Bedford) is right to say that Britain deserves better. Many hon. Members have mentioned that the previous Government failed to fix the crisis, which is true, but we have had a Labour Government for well over a year and it is their job to control our borders. Instead of doing any better, the situation has got worse. Will the Minister commit today to preventing those who arrive here illegally from applying for asylum? If not, will he please explain why not? Will he please commit today to a concrete timeline for the closure of asylum hotels, and to fully tracking, including in the welfare system, the lifetime costs of asylum claims?

[Sir John Hayes (in the Chair)]

I call the Minister, and ask him to allow a moment or two for the mover to sum up at the end.

18:55

[The Minister for Border Security and Asylum (Alex Norris)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir John. I assure hon. Members that I will leave more than just a moment of the time remaining.

I want to start by thanking my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan) for introducing the debate. I have said this before, but it bears repeating: it is a very difficult job to present a petition in these debates as a member of the Petitions Committee. The Committee member is asked to speak for, in this case, hundreds of thousands of people, some of whose sentiments they share, but not all. Those people all have their different views and different takes, and the Committee member has to bring those voices into the room, although it is a speech in their own name, and to reflect the views of their constituents and their personal experience too. My hon. and learned Friend did an excellent job.

We were all struck—not least because they were mirrored in so many contributions—by the points of my hon. and learned Friend about our nation’s proud history of providing shelter, with his particularly poignant reference to 1914 and his community. The issue is of great interest to the people of Folkestone and Hythe. I, too, thought of our history in this space. I have seen, as all hon. Members have and as a number of them referenced, the British public’s breathtaking capacity for humanity and compassion for those who need it.

My hon. and learned Friend talked, of course, of 1914. We could echo that down the decades, but I think of recent years, too, and the Afghan and Syrian resettlement schemes, Homes for Ukraine and the support for the British national overseas visa. The British people have stepped up for people in need. That is the country that I know and love.

We know that there is anger, however, because people see too often that those who do not have the same degree of need are testing the system because they think it is in their interests to do so, or that there are those seeking to game the system. There is no doubt that that is pulling at public trust. All of us, whatever our political persuasion, see and feel that on the doorsteps and in our mailbags. It serves nobody to say that we do not or to suggest there is not something that the Government of the day need to address.

This is a challenge of public confidence in our asylum system, but that has been turbocharged in recent years by the disreputable act of stopping processing. That created a huge backlog, which means that hotels, which were never part of this nation’s approach to asylum, are now a significant part of it. We must name that as the original sin, but we know what people are saying now: they want order, fairness and humanity in the system. That has been lost in recent years, which is why we see the degree of anger in these petitions, in our mailbags and beyond.

I am going to address the petitioners first, and then cover the important contributions made by hon. Members. On petition 705383 and the suggestion that support for asylum seekers should be stopped, the reality is that doing so overnight would mean that, in many cases—I dare say the vast majority—those people, including children and vulnerable people, would end up living on the street.

That is not the right way to exit hotel accommodation. A better approach is to continue to speed up the processing of asylum claims, so that those who are genuine refugees can be accepted and those who are not can have their claims rejected before being removed. Either way, we will reduce the amount of money being spent on asylum support. I am proud that, under this Government, we are already spending £1 billion less, including £500 million less on hotels. However, I know that the British public want us to go further so that the money can be invested in the British people’s priorities, and rightly so.

That is why we are working so hard to turn around the backlog of tens of thousands, which we inherited, by reforming each stage of the asylum system. We have doubled decision making, as we committed to at the election, and the backlog is already down by some 18%. We are reforming the appeal system entirely. Provisions in the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill will introduce a statutory timeframe for supported accommodation cases, halving the disposal time for such appeals and enabling swifter movement out of hotel accommodation. And for those who have no right to be here, there will be swifter departure from the UK.

We have a statutory obligation to continue to support those whose claims are being considered, in order to prevent destitution. We have tightened the terms and introduced tougher sanctions for those who refuse suitable accommodation without a valid reason. However, we have legal and, I would argue, moral imperatives not to create mass destitution simply by turfing them out with no support.

As a number of colleagues have said today, although it has been lost in our public discourse, it is important to recognise that the individuals we are discussing today do not have access to our welfare system. A frequent refrain from people who engage with me on this issue is that one of their frustrations is that people come here to use our welfare system, but that is not what is happening. We are meeting our obligations to prevent destitution, but that is it.

E-petition 718406 relates directly to hotels. It says explicitly that the Labour party made a commitment at the last election to close those hotels, and it says we ought to do so now that we are in power. We will make good on that pledge, as we said in our manifesto before the election that we would close the hotels during this Parliament. We are committed to that, and that is what we are doing. We will go at the fastest pace we can, which is why we are looking at options with local partners—a number of colleagues have raised that issue, and I will cover it in a little while.

We are also looking at a range of sites, including military sites. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe talked about the work at Napier barracks. When such work is done thoughtfully, in a planned manner with the community and with civil society, it can be a really good model, and we are looking very closely at that work. We are also looking at disused industrial sites.

By processing claims, we are allowing those fleeing persecution to move out of support and rebuild their lives. For those individuals with no right to remain in the UK, we are taking the actions that are needed. We have removed from the UK more than 35,000 people who have no right to be here, which includes a 28% increase in the return of failed asylum seekers.

We are also working upstream—this was a matter of interest to colleagues—to disrupt the criminal gangs that profit from this misery and the dangerous small boat crossings, which are a significant factor behind the trends we have seen. Significantly, we are doing that by boosting funding for the National Crime Agency, so that there is more capacity, and through our innovative international agreements, such as the one with France, to return those with no right to be here.

I now turn to some of the contributions, starting with those from Conservative colleagues. I would argue that it is no coincidence that no Conservative Member of the previous Parliament contributed to today’s debate. I promise that I am the last person to police colleagues’ diaries, as there is nothing worse than saying, “Well, there’s five of ours and eight of yours, so what does that mean?” However, that is a really important point. It was interesting to hear what the hon. Member for Weald of Kent (Katie Lam), the Opposition spokesperson, said. As yet, there has been no acceptance or willingness to put a name on why we are in this situation. Instead, there is this rather heroic hope that the British people will believe that, in 14 months, the Conservatives have learned the lessons and now know how to fix a crisis that they created over 14 years. I gently say that that is a heroic expectation.

With characteristic charm, the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp) talked about the important impact of the hotel in his community. I cannot give him a date for its closure, but what I can say is that we will not have that hotel open a day longer than is needed. We have made a commitment to an ordered exit from asylum hotels. He talked about challenges in getting information from the Department. I am a new Minister, but I will always endeavour to do my utmost to get him the information he needs. It is the same for all colleagues, because we have an important role.

Multiple times a week, people, including those in positions of responsibility—less often Members of Parliament, but certainly people in local government—feed on those rumours: “I’ve seen this online. What does this mean?”. They create a buzz and a bubble of activity around rumours with no foundation. It is better, and in our interests, for colleagues to have the best information possible so that we can be the leaders we need to be. I know that colleagues would want to do it in that way.

The hon. Member for Bridgwater (Sir Ashley Fox) asked about the progress on taking on organised crime. I am pleased to tell him that we have made 350 disruptions of people-smuggling operations, which is a 40% increase on last year. We are serious about going after them, and we will leave no stone unturned in doing so.

[Sir Ashley Fox]

If the hon. Gentleman has been so successful, why is the number of boat crossings up 50% on this time last year? And why are there 3,000 more people in asylum hotels than before he came to office?

[Alex Norris]

The hon. Gentleman knows as well as I do that these journeys take a very long time, so those are lagging indicators. He also knows that the number of people in hotels currently sits at 32,000, compared with 56,000 in September ’23. The journey is in the right direction. Of course, there are bobbles along the way, but we will deliver on the commitment that we have made.

[Sir Ashley Fox]

Yes, the number was 56,000 in 2023, but the previous Government brought it down to 29,500 in June 2024. The reduction that the hon. Gentleman mentions was all under the previous Conservative Government. The number has gone up by 3,000 since he took office.

[Alex Norris]

I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s heroism in asking for regards and laurels for housing merely 30,000 people in hotels as opposed to 56,000, but I do not think that will wash. The reality is that we will be the ones who end hotel use.

The hon. Gentleman also mentioned deterrence. Conservative colleagues cannot really believe that a scheme that sent four volunteers for £700 million formed a meaningful deterrent. We want to have a deterrent, and returns agreements are good deterrents, which is why we innovated one with France. Indeed, the shadow Home Secretary was very keen on them, but was unable to deliver. We delivered it. That is exactly why we proceeded in that way.

The hon. Member for Mid Leicestershire (Mr Bedford) talked about how hotels and the housing waiting lists are dreadful. He talked about how dreadful homelessness is and the pressure on public services. He is going to be very angry when he meets the people who did that. The sad thing is that they are on his Front Bench, not ours. He talked about a future Tory Government, which will remain a long way off until the Conservatives come properly to terms with their legacy in this area and across public services, the economy and beyond.

The hon. Member for Runcorn and Helsby (Sarah Pochin) talked about how fed up her constituents are. That is a point of agreement with me, but perhaps the end of such agreement. Many people who signed this petition, who may have voted Reform in the previous county council elections or who are thinking about voting Reform in a general election, will be watching this debate. I say to them that I believe her contribution is exactly why they cannot and should not vote for Reform. She said that she agreed with the petitioners. She said that no money should be spent on this cohort of people, and within the next sentence she spent tens of billions of pounds on her solution to the problem. Those are not serious answers.

Similarly, the hon. Lady said that the past offered no solutions. Within 10 minutes, the former leader, and now deputy leader, of her party, the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice), who is not in his place, contradicted that by asking why we could not just go back to how things were 20 years ago. The reality is that Reform will argue each end of any argument if it thinks that doing so will receive political support. The last thing Reform wants is for the Government of the day to solve this problem. I am afraid that we will disappoint Reform on that, because we are very much going to do so.

The right to work was a major feature of the debate. A number of colleagues talked about that, including my hon. Friends the Members for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum) and for Clapham and Brixton Hill (Bell Ribeiro-Addy), and the hon. Members for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East (Seamus Logan), for Bristol Central (Carla Denyer), for Wimbledon (Mr Kohler) and for Woking (Mr Forster)—I would be a good train announcer, and I suspect it would be quite a journey. I appreciate why there is a degree of enthusiasm for the right to work. As a member of the Labour party, I believe that work gives people dignity and purpose, and it should always make people better off. It is certainly better than being on welfare or, as in this case, in asylum accommodation.

The reality is that this country is already attractive. People take the breathtaking risk, which should never happen, of entering the channel in a precarious small boat because this is an attractive country. The right to work would create greater attraction and greater reason to take that risk, and I cannot support that.

[Carla Denyer]

I have previously asked Home Office Ministers, and staff supporting them, whether they have any evidence for the claim that allowing asylum seekers to work while waiting for a decision would act as a pull factor. That evidence was not provided to me. Can the Minister provide it?

[Alex Norris]

Counterfactual cases can be challenging, but we see that already: it is well reported, well documented and well evidenced that work in the illicit economy already acts as a significant pull factor. That is why, through provisions of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill, we are seeking to make that work harder, particularly in the gig economy. We know that the ability merely to work illegally is already attractive; imagine what it would be like if that was a condoned and supported approach. The Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Woking, talked about timeliness. We do have the backstop that if someone’s claim has been delayed for 12 months and it is not their fault, they will be allowed to work. I have to say I would never want that to be used, because we do not want claims to last that long, but there is at least that backstop.

My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe and my hon. Friends the Members for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Danny Beales) and for York Outer (Mr Charters) made important points about local authorities. There is absolutely no doubt that the Home Office under the previous Government did not treat local authorities as equal partners, or even as partners at all, in this process. Hon. Members will know that my previous role in the Government was in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. The reality is that local authorities know their communities —they have the most intimate connection to them—and we are committed to better information, better engagement and better work with local authorities. We have made up to £500 million available as a pilot to do as colleagues have suggested: allow local authorities to buy up the stock themselves and keep it. When the demand is not there in the future, that stock could be part of tackling ongoing housing challenges.

That is an important upcoming piece of work, but I want to give a note of caution on dispersed accommodation. Dispersed accommodation will always be part of the solution. It is something that all local authorities provide to some degree, whether for people fleeing domestic abuse, people with substance abuse issues or people with homelessness issues. Dispersed accommodation is a part of all communities, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Brash) said, when certain communities see vast swathes of their streets bought up, it ceases to be dispersed accommodation. I urge colleagues to be very cautious of thinking that that alone could be the panacea. That is why we are looking at bigger sites alongside dispersed accommodation; otherwise, we will merely test the public’s confidence on that point as well, and I do not think that is the right thing to do.

My hon. Friends the Members for Stevenage (Kevin Bonavia) and for Falkirk (Euan Stainbank) also talked about local authorities in the context of exit strategies. Again, I am committed to full engagement and full transparency. It will be done in an orderly way, but it may not be done simultaneously, and of course confidence needs to be built into the process. I can give that assurance.

The hon. Member for Wimbledon and my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh (Chris Murray), who serve, as I used to, on the Home Affairs Committee, have a very important report coming out. I commit to them that I will look at it very closely. We are concerned about quality, and about profiteering in the sector. As they said, we inherited a 2019 contract that has a break point in 2026 and ends in 2029. We are looking to get the best value. I hope that the work we are doing with local government shows our interest in alternative models. We want to get the very best. I think of the horror stories that my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer talked about—we are very conscious of those. However, Ministers will not hide behind criticism of third parties, if they are acting in delivery of Government policy. It is for us to make sure that those providers are operating in the right way and that, when they are not, the issues are tackled swiftly. That is my commitment.

The hon. Member for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord) asked why there is so much focus on this group, and I will use that as a bridge into a more general point. First, this issue is important because the public are aghast when they see people entering the channel and coming to the country in that way; they lose all confidence the system is orderly. We have to address that if we are going to build any public confidence in the system. I do not refer to the hon. Gentleman in particular in saying this, but for colleagues who believe in the system and want to improve it or make it even more generous, there is a danger in defending a broken status quo. They ought not do so.

[Richard Foord]

I think the Minister is either misunderstanding or mischaracterising my contribution, but will he please comment on the potential return hubs for failed asylum seekers?

[Alex Norris]

I would certainly never seek to mischaracterise the hon. Gentleman. I cannot commit to never misunderstanding him, but I certainly would never mischaracterise him. I understood that he had asked why there is so much focus on this cohort within the wider migration figures. If I am wrong, I apologise without reservation. On return hubs, he will have seen what the Prime Minister said, and that is the Government’s position on that matter.

Any system that involves multiple tens of thousands of people entering the channel and making an incredibly dangerous journey, any system in which tens of thousands of people are living in hotels, any system that leads net migration in this country to reach 900,000, any system in which people must wait and wait for a letter about their future—I have had conversations with people in that situation, and they are often people who have left the most desperate situations—is a broken system. Of course the Government of the day, whether in the borders Bill or the immigration White Paper, will seek to tackle those things. We must not defend a status quo that works for neither the British people nor the individuals who are reliant on it for sanctuary and safety.

This has been a robust and very important debate. I hope that those who signed the petitions in considerable numbers will have had the chance to watch the debate and seen that Parliament has taken their views seriously and had a thoughtful and constructive debate on them. This is a hugely important issue for the Government of the day. We have been working in overdrive since the general election to fix the chronic problems that we inherited. We will keep doing so, and along the way we will end the use of hotels once and for all.

19:17

[Tony Vaughan]

I thank the Minister for his response, and I thank all Members who have taken part in the debate. It is extremely important for everyone who signed the petitions to see that we are listening, and that we are considering and debating these very important issues.

I am not sure I heard anyone dispute the proposition that asylum hotels need to close. They are inappropriate for people seeking asylum, as was said by my hon. Friends the Members for York Outer (Mr Charters) and for Clapham and Brixton Hill (Bell Ribeiro-Addy). They are extortionate, as we have all heard, and they contribute to the sense of unfairness in our communities, as my hon. Friends the Members for Hartlepool (Mr Brash) and for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh (Chris Murray) said; the latter pointed out that an accommodation provider appeared on the Sunday Times rich list thanks to public funds. The current situation is utterly acceptable.

I am happy to be corrected, but I also did not hear anyone specifically argue that support should be removed from people seeking asylum. However, I did hear some hon. Members—the hon. Members for Runcorn and Helsby (Sarah Pochin) and for Mid Leicestershire (Mr Bedford)—arguing against the very principle of an asylum system. That is not actually what the creators of these two petitions believe. I spoke to one of them and received quite a detailed briefing note from the other, and the way they talked to me about their concerns very much chimed with what my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool said earlier. There are concerns here, and they need to be listened to very carefully. Ultimately, they are about the communities that the petitioners live in. They have the compassion to accept that we should grant sanctuary to those fleeing persecution—I genuinely think that that is where the vast majority of British people are on this issue—but the question, of course, is how we have compassion and how we have control over our asylum system.

As the Minister said, Labour is getting on with the job of closing hotels, speeding up decision making and removing those who have no right to be here. I fully accept the challenges, but it does not lie in the mouth of the Conservative party to criticise the measures that this Government are taking to clear up the mess that the Conservatives helped to create. Brexit caused us to lose our returns agreement with the EU—I accept that it was underutilised, but nevertheless it was an agreement—the pausing of asylum decisions massively increased the application backlog, and the pressure on the asylum and accommodation system then increased massively.

The idea that we could just junk our international obligations and deport everyone if we withdrew from the treaties is complete fantasy. As I said, we need the ECHR to solve the irregular migration issue. Had we not been in the convention, the UK-France deal would not have been signed, nor would we have had the credibility to work with international partners such as Bulgaria, Germany and France on the upstream issues. We would also jeopardise peace in Northern Ireland without those measures. The truth is that the common law has set its face against torture for centuries, so I am afraid the idea that without the refugee convention and the ECHR we would be free to send a person back to torture is legal nonsense and morally repugnant, and it would make the UK an international pariah. It would also run contrary to our British values of fairness and decency.

We do need to consider innovative solutions to address the asylum support and accommodation challenges: increasing asylum decision-making capacity; providing early access to legal aid and identifying claims as early as possible; deciding appeals more quickly; expanding our housing stock and applying break clauses to accommodation contracts. We must do all those things, and we must do them more quickly. I support the Government’s approach, which the Minister set out. He knows better than anyone that winning back public confidence in our asylum system is essential. I wish him luck in that.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered e-petitions 705383 and 718406 relating to support and accommodation for asylum seekers.

19:21

Sitting adjourned.