Asylum Seekers: Support and Accommodation

Gideon Amos Excerpts

Monday 20th October 2025 Westminster Hall

[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.