Asylum Seekers: Support and Accommodation

Tim Farron Excerpts

Monday 20th October 2025 Westminster Hall

[Tony Vaughan (Folkestone and Hythe) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered e-petitions 705383 and 718406 relating to support and accommodation for asylum seekers.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Murrison. I lead this debate for the Petitions Committee, and I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests for the support I receive from the Refugee, Asylum, Migration and Policy Project. I start by thanking the petition creators, Robert Barnes and Bob Clements, and all those who have signed the two petitions. Mr Barnes’s petition calls on the Government to

“Shut the migrant hotels down now and deport illegal migrants housed there”,

and was signed by more than 256,000 people. Mr Clements’s petition calls on the Government to

“Stop financial and other support for asylum seekers”,

and has more than 427,000 signatures.

Mr Barnes, whom I spoke with last week, does not oppose asylum. He believes that we should grant sanctuary to those fleeing persecution at home. He is absolutely right about that fundamental truth. It is who we are. Our British values of fairness and decency explain why, across generations, we have welcomed refugees from the across the globe—those escaping Hitler’s tyranny, Idi Amin’s brutality or Soviet oppression. Each time, some voices demanded closed borders, and each time, Britain chose humanity over heartlessness.

Those values were in action when, on 14 October 1914, 16,000 Belgian refugees reached Folkestone harbour in my constituency in one day, fleeing Germany’s invasion. Those arrivals instantly doubled the town’s population, yet locals immediately organised food, clothing, shelter and medical care. Some 250,000 Belgian refugees found sanctuary across Britain during world war one, which reflected the instinctive human compassion for others’ desperation—a compassion built into our British sense of fairness.

We see those values enduring in my constituency today, in the activities of the local charity Napier Friends, which supports residents at Napier barracks. The charity has achieved incredible things, running English classes and creating volunteer opportunities to help our local community, including litter picking and organising gleaning, which is essentially collecting extra local produce to donate to food banks for people who need that extra food. My recent Napier visit showed outstanding work both by Napier Friends and current staff, and I thank them for all their work and for the compassion they show in doing it.

The key question the petitions ask is simple: how should we treat people while they wait for their asylum decision from the UK Government? It is that waiting time that costs the state money, because asylum applicants cannot work for the first 12 months. There is a strong argument for shortening that period to around six months, as France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy and Spain have done, to ease pressure on the accommodation system. Mr Barnes told me that he does not want to throw asylum applicants out on to the street. He wants to end hotel use. He wants to speed up asylum processing. He wants us to be quicker at removing people with no right to stay.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I am grateful for the hon. and learned Member’s opening remarks. I too would like to put on record the support I get from the Refugee, Asylum, Migration and Policy Project. The Government have managed to get the number of people waiting for initial decision down by 18% in the last year, which is good, but the number waiting for an appeal is up by 88%. One in two asylum seekers has no access to legal representation through the process, and that is what is slowing it down. Would the hon. Gentleman agree that ensuring that asylum seekers get that representation is just, and also will oil the wheels so we get people moved quicker?

[Tony Vaughan]

I agree with the hon. Member that we absolutely must ensure that those seeking asylum have proper access to legal aid. It is much quicker and cheaper in the long run if we can flush out all the claims at the outset, so that we do not have them raised at the last minute, when perhaps costs are higher. I am absolutely behind the hon. Member on that.

On the points that Mr Barnes made to me, I agree with him, and I imagine that the Government do too. Labour’s manifesto promised to end hotel use by the end of this Parliament, and we are already well ahead of schedule. Hotel use peaked in August 2023 at £9 million spent every day across 400 facilities; since taking power, Labour has already cut hotel numbers in half and slashed £500 million yearly from asylum hotel costs, closing 23 asylum hotels.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lincoln Jopp (Spelthorne) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison.

In my constituency we have the Stanwell hotel, which is currently an asylum hotel. From correspondence in my mailbag, I had heard there was the potential for the Home Office to change its policy on use. Hitherto, the capacity for families at the Stanwell hotel was 114, and the families who were there had integrated well. They had gone to local schools, got involved in local churches and in some cases were undergoing medical treatment as a result of pre-existing conditions. There were also some single people there. I visited on 3 October and was told there had been no history of poor interactions between single males and families.

The residents of Trinity Close were very concerned because they got wind of a rumour that the Stanwell hotel was going to be reconfigured from being pretty much families only to being used for single males only, so they asked me to try to find out. I wrote to the Home Office on three occasions and asked how long the contract for the hotel had been signed for, but the Home Office did not reply, so I had to raise it with the Home Secretary on the Floor of the House. I was assured that I would receive a response, including a date when I could visit. The Home Office team were then all cleared out; I could speculate on the reasons, but the Government will know.

I finally got a chance to visit on 3 October, when I spent two hours there and learned a number of things. First, the hotel had not quite transitioned to full capacity for single males. I was told it was going to take a matter of weeks, so it is possible that it has been done now. This is of great concern to local residents, who much preferred it when the hotel was used for families only, because of its proximity to schools and green spaces, which makes Stanwell village a pretty inappropriate place for 98 single males only.

I saw the conditions people were in, with two to a room. One thing really got to me. The Government’s line is that they want to reduce the number of hotels, so they are going to sweat the existing estate harder by putting more people into it so that they can close things down. I was aghast to find that the Stanwell’s capacity as a families-only hotel was way higher than when it is used for single males, which did not make sense to me.

Having written to the Home Office to ask when the contract was going to end, I was told in a letter that that was not the sort of commercial information it was customary to share. I was delighted to get a letter yesterday confirming that what I had heard on the visit was correct and the contract ends on 31 July next year.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes the local council has been trying to find out what has been going on, as I have in parallel. At an emergency general meeting the Conservative group on Spelthorne borough council proposed an amendment calling for the hotel to be returned to use as a community hotel, which is exactly what the community wants. It is the place where people went for weddings and funerals, for playing cards in the afternoon and for Sunday lunch, and that is what they want it to be again. I was fairly surprised, then, that Spelthorne borough council, which comprises independents, Liberals and Labour, voted against returning it to use as a community hotel, which is Government policy. The Minister might wish to follow that up with Labour councillors in Spelthorne.

[Tim Farron]

I commend the hon. Member for taking the time to visit to see for himself and to hear people’s voices, and I mean that sincerely. More colleagues should do that before forming opinions. What he is talking about is the use of a private asset for public purposes and at the cost of public money. At the same time, those in that hotel are on £9.95 a week, so they are not living the life of Riley, as I am sure the hon. Member agrees. There is a cost to the taxpayer, and misery and hardship for the asylum seekers. Does he think that one answer is to give asylum seekers the right to work, so that they can pay their own way and integrate better? It would be better for them and their families, and better for the taxpayer.

[Lincoln Jopp]

When President Macron visited earlier this year, he said part of the problem was that there were far too many pull factors in Britain. Giving people the right to work would, to my mind, be another pull factor. The Government would quite rightly say, “Well, you didn’t manage to do it either,” but I would much rather we were able to control our borders ab initio, so that we did not have to face the problem of asylum hotels.