Oral Answers to Questions

Kate Osamor Excerpts

Monday 18th September 2023 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Kate Osamor (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op)]

1. What steps she is taking with Cabinet colleagues to ensure an adequate standard of accommodation for refugees and asylum seekers.

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Suella Braverman)]

The asylum accommodation support contracts ensure the provision of safe, habitable, fit-for-purpose and correctly equipped accommodation for destitute asylum seekers. The contracts also require compliance with the law, local authority licensing and best practice guidance. We have been working with the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities to minimise the potential impact on homelessness, and have agreed an asylum placement funding for local authorities.

[Kate Osamor]

We hear the Government talking about £6 million per day being wasted on hotels, but we do not hear about the billions being forked out on private companies such as Serco and Clearsprings Ready Homes, both of which have seen scores of complaints, including about unsanitary conditions, a lack of safeguarding, and sexual abuse. Does the Home Secretary think that it is appropriate to entrust those companies with taxpayers’ money to run asylum accommodation in hotels and former Ministry of Defence sites?