Diana Johnson
Main Page: Diana Johnson (Labour - Kingston upon Hull North and Cottingham)Department Debates - View all Diana Johnson's debates with the Home Office
(10 months, 1 week ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
Last week, The Times reported that there are 10,000 hotel beds going unused, at a cost of £1.5 million a day—that is in addition to the 3,500 buffer of empty beds held as a contingency in case of Manston being overwhelmed. Are those figures actually correct?
Tom Pursglove
The right hon. Lady will recognise that it is of course important for there to be a buffer, to make sure that operationally we have the bed spaces required in a contingency situation to be able to respond to any surges and particular challenges. That is a difficult area but one that we are looking at carefully. Within the hotel estate, we are of course maximising the use of bed spaces wherever possible, which again helps us to get on and close the hotels, in a way that I think she would like to see.