Hotel Asylum Accommodation: Local Authority Consultation

Baroness Winterton of Doncaster Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising those important issues. I will, of course, be happy to meet him, as I have met hon. Members on both sides of the House in almost every case where someone has requested to do so.

In respect of the hotel in Tendring, as I understand it, having spoken to officials this morning, a proposition was put to Tendring District Council to use a former care home in my hon. Friend’s constituency, which would have accommodated a small number of asylum seekers. Short notice was given because it was to be a backstop accommodation option in the light of the extreme situation that we were contending with at Manston. On further inquiries, and prior to his inquiry to the Department and the calling of the urgent question, the proposition was dropped by the Home Office and there is no intention of proceeding with it.

For information, had that proposition been taken forward, it would have been for a very small number of individuals. At the moment, there are 39 asylum seekers accommodated in my hon. Friend’s constituency, 14 of whom are in hotels and 25 in dispersed accommodation. That accounts for 0.02% of the population of Tendring’s local authority. I do not say that to diminish the legitimate concerns that he raises, but merely to provide context. If we are dealing with 40,000 individuals crossing the channel illegally, there will be a need for all local authorities in the country to work with the Home Office and to play their part. It is absolutely incumbent on the Home Office in return, however, to provide good standards of engagement so that we can ensure that the right accommodation is chosen in the right places. That is exactly what I intend to achieve.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call the shadow Minister, Stephen Kinnock.

[Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)]

It seems that we come to the Chamber at least once a week to hear about the mess that the Home Secretary is making of an asylum system that her Government have broken. The root cause of today’s urgent question is the failure of the Government to process asylum claims with anything like the efficiency required. In 2012, the Home Office was making 14 asylum decisions a month; it is now making just five.

Tory Ministers like to blame covid, but the truth is that this is a mess of their own making. They chose to downgrade asylum decision makers from higher executive officer grade to lower executive officer grade, leading to a less experienced workforce on lower wages with lower retention rates and collapsing morale. The inevitable consequences were slower decisions, more decisions overturned at appeal, an increasing backlog and ballooning taxpayer costs.

With the average time to process an asylum claim standing at 449 days, the people smugglers see the backlog as a marketing opportunity—an open invite from this Conservative Government to those who want to melt away into the underground economy. All this catastrophic incompetence has led to the Minister scrambling around to find contingency hotel accommodation, resulting in what the Home Secretary described this morning as “poor communication” between central and local government.

Will the Minister therefore confirm whether he really feels that his undertaking to give local authorities as little as 24 hours’ notice is reasonable? Did he recently pull out of two meetings with council leaders at short notice? What mechanisms is he using to monitor the performance of contractors and subcontractors? I have heard from councils where the public health team was not informed about serious health issues, including pregnancies, so does he accept that he is failing to give local authorities key health-related information? What progress is he making on tackling the crisis of unaccompanied children being placed in hotels— 222 have already gone missing—and will he apologise to the couples who have had to cancel their wedding receptions in hotels at extremely short notice as a result of this Government’s chronic mismanagement?

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[Robert Jenrick]

I can only speak to the situation as I found it when I arrived in the Department, and at that point there were almost 4,000 people at the Manston site. There were serious concerns about conditions at the site and, indeed, about its legality, and there was insufficient accommodation available to us to house the asylum seekers. We have set out, through immense efforts in the last few weeks, to rectify that situation. It is clear to me that insufficient accommodation was procured over a sustained period, and we need to tackle that. We will do it in a number of different ways, including through dispersal accommodation with local authorities; through judicious use of hotels, with good engagement with local authorities; by using larger sites that provide us with decent but not luxurious accommodation; and, of course, by tackling the problem at source. We cannot build our way out of this challenge. We have to reduce the pull factors to the UK and we have to ensure that the backlog of cases is cleared as swiftly as possible.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call the SNP spokesperson.

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

I think we are all agreed in this House that it is important that the Home Office liaises in advance with local authorities, service providers, non-governmental organisations and local representatives. The Minister has made some commitments in that regard today, and we will obviously monitor closely how those are implemented and how they work. We should also be agreed, and I think we are close to being agreed, that hotels really should be a matter of last resort, rather than routine, so I have a couple of thoughts on how we get there.

First, on where the Home Office spends resources, I hate to say it—well, I do not mind saying it—but the £140 million spent on Rwanda is a complete waste of money. Could the Minister confirm that about 4,000 or 5,000 caseworkers could have been employed for that sort of sum? Let us not waste any more money on that at all. Will he also look at the tens of millions of pounds that contractors are now raking in in profit through that scheme, and seek to provide that money directly to local authorities to procure accommodation in their communities?

Secondly, on the backlog, as I have said before, there are thousands—tens of thousands—of Afghans and Syrians in the system who could be taken out of it with a quick decision. The inadmissibility procedure is a complete waste of time. It achieves nothing, and it clogs up 10,000 spaces.

Finally, we did hear confirmation today that decision makers are among the lowest-paid civil servants going, but they make life and death decisions. Surely that has to be looked at again, and they need to be paid properly.

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[Robert Jenrick]

My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and I are reviewing the legal situation, and we will come to a view about whether further changes are needed to make sure that our laws are sufficiently robust. My right hon. Friend and I are in agreement that individuals should come to this country only if they are genuine asylum seekers fleeing persecution, war or human rights abuses, not asylum shoppers who have passed through multiple safe countries, including France, and certainly not if they come from demonstrably safe countries in the first place, such as Albania. We should pursue all options, including Rwanda, to create the right amount of deterrence to deter people from making the crossing.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee.

[Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

I welcome the fact that Manston is empty today, but can I say to the Minister that it should never have got into the mess that it did, because the Home Office was working on forecasts of up to 60,000 people travelling across the channel this year? The Home Affairs Committee produced a report in the summer, and our No. 1 recommendation was to deal with the backlog to stop people having to go into hotels.

Can I highlight to the Minister that Home Office contractors that seek accommodation for asylum seekers are really only interested in the bottom line? They have concentrated the accommodation they have sourced in the poorer, cheaper areas—places such as my own constituency in Hull—and even when local councils in Yorkshire have come together to try to ensure equitable distribution across Yorkshire, Mears, which provides the accommodation for the Home Office, actually overrules local councils and does not do a service to the Home Office. Will the Minister look at the role that his contractors are playing in the inequitable nature of the distribution of asylum seekers?

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Jenrick]

I have a great deal of respect for the hon. Gentleman—he and I have worked together on local government matters for many years—and I will certainly ask my officials to speak to the city council and see if we can resolve that issue. It is true that, in some areas—even within a particular local authority—the local authority itself creates red lines as to where it wants to have contingency accommodation by saying that there are postcodes where they do not want to see such hotels. That may not be the case in Sheffield, but it is in other areas. The outsource partners raised that with me earlier in the week. We may be able to work together on that to ensure a better distribution, even within local authority areas.

It is, of course, important that we take into account value for money for the taxpayer when we choose hotels. I think it is outrageous that the taxpayer is paying £6 million a day for these hotels. I could not have been clearer to my officials or the outsource partners that I do not want to see the four-star hotels, the stately homes, the luxury barn conversions and the many outrageous examples brought to my attention in the last few weeks persist.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. We do have a lot of business to get through this afternoon, so, if we could have quick questions and quick answers, that would be very helpful.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

I believe that the situation is now so bad and chaotic that the Minister should consider his position.

On Friday, North Northampton Council, Northants police and other local agencies had an online meeting with the Home Office and Serco regarding the potential use of the 51-bed Royal hotel in Kettering, slap bang in the middle of the town centre. Serious environmental health issues, including mould and no kitchen facilities, were raised. Northants police raised serious concerns about community safety and the vulnerability of the asylum seekers. The Home Office and Serco officials agreed that the hotel would not be used until those issues were properly addressed. Yesterday, the council was advised that 41 asylum seekers had been moved into the hotel on Sunday afternoon, without any notification at all, and that could rise to 80. No biometric of previous offending history data has been shared with the local police. It is totally, 100% unacceptable.

On 27 October, I asked the Minister face to face for a meeting. I asked him again on the Floor of the House last Wednesday. No such meeting has been forthcoming. This is a wrong-headed decision. The local police, the local council and I have been misled, and I have no confidence at all that the Home Office, Serco or the Minister have the first clue what they are doing in relation to asylum seeker relocation.