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.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gideon Amos Excerpts

Monday 2nd June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Seema Malhotra]

The statement that we recently issued with France and Germany, calling for Israel to immediately restart a rapid and unimpeded flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza, was vital. We still need to see so much more action being taken. Any decision to implement a bespoke visa scheme would need to consider a range of factors, including the unique crisis situation and the relevant impacts on security, compliance and returns. As I have said, immediate family members are able to join those in the UK using one of the existing family routes.

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

My constituents in Taunton have a proud record of supporting refugees; they would support refugees from Gaza, as they do those from other countries. But charities that support refugees come to me with concerns about the asylum accommodation being allocated to the town. Will the Minister meet me to discuss the concerns about the latest allocations, on which I was not consulted, and about which I received no notification?

[Seema Malhotra]

I will be very happy to meet the hon. Gentleman.

Crime and Policing Bill

Gideon Amos Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 10th March 2025 Commons Chamber

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

I welcome many of the measures in the Bill, particularly those concerning knife crime and the protection of shop workers who all too often bear the brunt of antisocial behaviour. However, one of the biggest deterrents for criminals is the certainty of being caught, and reductions in police numbers nationally are as wrong as they are locally. In Avon and Somerset, the former Conservative police and crime commissioner cut PCSOs by a further 80 last year—a massive 28% reduction—and closed our Taunton police station.

I welcome clause 4’s provisions on public space protection orders, which I will come on to. I welcome the commitment to deliver 13,000 extra officers of various kinds, but worrying for me is the fact that my constituents have come to see me about their relatives who are serving police officers. Civilians have been replaced by officers in uniform doing the same civilian jobs, just so that it can be claimed that police numbers have increased. I hope the Minister will make sure that that does not continue to occur with the new recruitment, which is very welcome. Unless officers are seen in our communities and on the streets, they will not deter or catch the criminals we need them to catch.

Last autumn, I was contacted by businesses in Castle Green in Taunton, which are at their wit’s end because of the antisocial behaviour in the historic centre of our county town. I contacted the chief constable straightaway. I am really grateful to Avon and Somerset officers for the efforts they have put in, as I am to the chamber of commerce in Taunton, which has raised the general issue of town centre crime and convened the safe streets forum that I attended last week, but it is clear that we need to deter antisocial behaviour and crime where it is taking place. That is proven by the fact that Lib Dem-run Taunton town council has just appointed a street marshal, who is on duty in our town centre. I spent the afternoon with Nick last Friday. He is doing an excellent job and covering a huge range of work, from people climbing all over the rooftops to retrieving thousands of pounds’ worth of stock by simply asking the person responsible to hand it over. He must have been quite persuasive in asking the individual to do that.

I congratulate Nick, our street marshal, but when I returned to Castle Green with him, it was clear that the antisocial behaviour problems there have become intractable. I therefore suggest that we need to work with Somerset council to get a public space protection order, and I hope the Government will support its enforcement. Too many of our great community events are marred by the antisocial few, and we need to tackle that. We need the public space of Castle Green, with its superb independent market, our famous Castle Hotel, the scheduled ancient monument, which is the castle itself, and the Museum of Somerset where soon people will be able to see the Chew valley hoard of silver coins from the Norman conquest. I cannot use those coins to pay for the enforcement of the public space protection order, but I hope it will have Government support so that we can ensure that key public spaces are not subject to conquest by those who would disobey the law, wreak havoc among local people, damage livelihoods and tarnish the generally superb reputation of our county town.