Asylum Hotels and Illegal Channel Crossings

Lord German Excerpts

Wednesday 26th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Hanson of Flint) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. I just remind him that, in 2016, there were no hotels in use; in 2023, there were 400. We have a manifesto commitment to end the use of hotels. That is because his Government failed in their process, did not manage asylum claims properly, allowed small boat crossings to increase and wasted £700 million on a Rwanda scheme which deterred nobody. We will have some discussions and lessons from that, but let us look at what we are doing. Between the general election on 4 July and 31 January this year, we have removed 19,000 failed asylum seekers, increased enforced returns by 24%, increased illegal working arrests by 38%, removed 2,591 foreign national offenders and had the four biggest return charter flights in the history of return charter flights. I hope I can look forward to his co-operation to pick up the mess that he left behind.

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, I declare my interest in that I am supported by the RAMP organisation. I know that the Minister accepts that hotels are unsuitable accommodation and that there are other forms of accommodation which should be provided. I have two questions about how to do that, one of which is about reducing the numbers of people who are waiting to have their cases heard. First, can he tell us what efforts are being made to ensure that individuals can have their appeals heard in a timely way, with adequate legal representation, so that correct decisions are taken when they are first heard rather than having to go through many following steps? Secondly, we could remove this problem by allowing people to work and pay for their own accommodation, so have the Government assessed allowing people who are being kept in this long queue the opportunity to work?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The real opportunity we are trying to take is to reduce the asylum backlog in the first place. If people claim asylum on arrival in the United Kingdom, from whatever source, we have a duty to assess that asylum claim. Sadly, the previous Government allowed that asylum claim backlog to balloon. We have tried to put in place 1,000 extra staff—funded by the resource that we have saved from scrapping the Rwanda scheme, which deterred nobody—who are now doing the very things that the noble Lord mentioned: reducing the asylum backlog and making sure that we deal with asylum claims. Those who are here can then go on to work and to provide their own accommodation. But there are also those who are not here, including the 19,000 we have removed between 4 July and 31 January, because we are speeding up asylum claims.