Migrants: Hotel Accommodation

Lord Mackinlay of Richborough Excerpts

Tuesday 1st July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend. Safeguarding is extremely important, and it is the Government’s ambition to remove all asylum seekers from hotels as soon as is practical. We have reduced the number of hotels: in fact, we have fewer hotels now, in the week of the general election anniversary, than we had last year when the Conservative Party left office. It is our ambition to further reduce that. When the Conservatives were in office, hotel costs peaked at £9 million per day. This time last year they were £8.5 million per day, and this year they are £6 million per day. That is still too high, but it is on the right, downward trajectory, and we will continue to safeguard in doing that.

[Lord Mackinlay of Richborough (Con)]

My Lords, I have a pal who has a fairly good-grade job. Many months ahead, he had booked four-star accommodation two days a week at a well-known hotel chain. He had a phone call out of the blue and was told, “I’m very sorry but your months-ahead booked accommodation in our four-star hotel has now been cancelled because the hotel of 150 rooms has been taken over for migrant accommodation”. Does the Minister agree with me that the pull factors of good accommodation are clear and obvious? The pull factor of the ability to get a delivery job in this country is very clear, and we can see illegal working on every high street. Until we get a grip on this issue, I am afraid that it will not get any better. We need rather more than “let’s smash the gangs”.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, and I would be grateful if he could write to me with the details of his friend’s hotel, because that is a great surprise to me. We are not opening new hotels; we are trying to reduce the number of such hotels and reducing the bill, under his Government, of £9 million a day to the current £6 million a day that I mentioned.

If the noble Lord wants to tackle illegal working, I recommend that he supports the Bill on employment rights currently before this House, which is about reducing the pull factors of illegal working and cracking down on illegal employers. As I recall, the Opposition have voted against that Bill on several occasions and plan to do so again.