Asylum Seekers: Support and Accommodation

Tony Vaughan 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.

[Mike Wood (Kingswinford and South Staffordshire) (Con)]

On the hon. and learned Gentleman’s claim that the Government are making progress, does he expect the total number of nights spent in hotels by asylum seekers to be higher or lower this year than it was last year?

[Tony Vaughan]

I do not know what is going to happen; I cannot predict the future. The point I am making is that the measures that are being taken are moving us faster in the right direction than even we had intended at the outset of the Parliament.

Labour also promised to clear the asylum backlog created by the last Government’s effective pausing of asylum decision making. This Labour Government have recruited more decision makers and sped up processing. In the first six months of this year, the Government processed about 60,000 asylum claims—around 70% more than the same period last year. On removing those with no right to stay, enforced returns have been increased by 25%, compared with the Conservatives’ final years in office.

There is of course still much more to do to win back public confidence in our asylum system. Mr Barnes supports the use of larger sites such as Napier barracks in Folkestone and former RAF Wethersfield. I visited Napier recently; while it has historically had poor conditions, they have improved in recent years. Napier costs the state around £106 per night, which is less than hotels, albeit not drastically so, and we should not forget that the set-up costs for large sites are huge—in the case of Wethersfield they were around £49 million.

The real alternative to hotels could be social housing. We must push for a better way than paying billions of pounds to private companies that make millions in profit, when that money could be spent on buying up assets and replenishing our national housing stock for the future. The BBC reports that the Home Office is looking into pilot schemes on that front. Any option that redirects even some of this accommodation expenditure into publicly owned housing assets, while supporting the asylum accommodation even temporarily, deserves serious attention.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds Central and Headingley) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. and learned Friend is making an excellent case. I understand that we are having this debate because 427,000 people signed the petition, but I hope that they are never in the circumstances that asylum seekers find themselves in. In terms of the accommodation, does my hon. and learned Friend agree that as we are moving people out of hotels and into better, community-based facilities, we need wraparound support in health and education, particularly learning English, legal support, integration into our communities and learning about British culture?

[Tony Vaughan]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend.

I will turn now to the issue of asylum support, and make two key points. First, people claiming asylum cannot access the UK’s mainstream benefits system. They receive initial full-board accommodation for 90 days, plus about £10 weekly. After that they move to longer-term housing and get around £49.18 a week for food, clothing and toiletries, which is much less than universal credit rates.

Secondly, the UK’s asylum support system is not a pull factor, as some, including Migration Watch, have claimed. The UK rate of £49.18 weekly barely beats France’s €47.60. Once we add in the costs of making an illegal crossing from France, the UK benefits system does not leave an adult male asylum seeker in a better position than in France. Evidence also shows that family, community and cultural connections matter far more than the benefits system.

Picture this, Dr Murrison: imagine that tomorrow we cut all asylum seeker financial support and closed all asylum hotels. What would happen next? Without alternatives, it would increase rough sleeping by over 500%, with over 30,000 more destitute people on our streets. That approach would clearly be immoral, as I trust hon. Members would agree. It would also pile massive pressure on social services, local authorities, NHS emergency services and the police.

The petitioners’ alternative to state support in the community is mass detention. Migration Watch also calls for the detention of all asylum claimants, as its director told me in a conversation last week as I prepared for this debate. Let us think that through. It would clearly be unlawful. It would also be inhumane, financially ruinous and completely useless. There are about 102,000 people in UK asylum accommodation, but our immigration detention capacity is only 2,200, so we would need a massive new detention facility expansion for immediate mass detention.

What would that expansion cost? Based on Ministry of Justice prison expansion plans, the National Audit Office estimates that a single new prison place would cost at least £470,000, excluding land and other costs. That is £47 billion for 100,000 detention places, which is about a third of the entire NHS budget. On top of that, immigration detention costs are about £122 per day, adding up to around £4.5 billion per year for that number of people. Clearly, detention on that scale would mean massive cuts to public services and huge tax rises.

[John Milne (Horsham) (LD)]

We would all like to see an end to the use of hotels, which is both wasteful and very unpopular in local communities. However, would the hon. and learned Member agree that the long-term solution to that, releasing pressure across the entire system, is a proper returns agreement with as many countries as possible, but definitely with France, so that we do not need to use any form of accommodation, large camps or hotels?

[Tony Vaughan]

We did have a returns agreement with Europe before we withdrew from the European Union—the Dublin regulation. It was this Government that negotiated a new agreement with France in the UK-France deal. That deal, which is compliant with all the international obligations we have, is the potential way forward to solving the problem.

[Sir Ashley Fox (Bridgwater) (Con)]

Does the hon. and learned Member accept that under the Dublin regulation the United Kingdom was a net recipient of refugees?

[Tony Vaughan]

The reality is that, if we do not have a mechanism in place—and it was essentially jettisoned by the Conservative party—there is no way of creating either a deterrent or a way of working with our colleagues in Europe to address these problems upstream. If we took the position of the Conservative party, which is to withdraw from the European convention and other international instruments, who would work with us upstream? France would not have signed that UK-France deal—signed in the summer by the Prime Minister—if we had been outside of the European convention on human rights. It is Brexit 2.0 from the Opposition. The Government are offering serious alternatives that simply are not being offered by anyone else.

What would mass detention actually achieve? The answer is nothing at all. It would not make it easier to carry out removals, because detention is already used for people who are ready for removal. Somebody with an outstanding asylum claim or who has no travel documents cannot be removed anyway. Would mass detentions stop people from coming? That is highly doubtful.

It is easy to underestimate how incredibly desperate many of the people who are arriving on small boats are. We assume that deterrents will defeat desperation, but both the Rwanda gimmick and other populist plans assume too much about the psychology of the people making these dangerous journeys. Mass detention is easy to say, but it is just another gimmick—inhumane, extortionate and, I am afraid, completely pointless.

During my recent visit to Napier barracks, I met an Iranian teacher who said simply, “I just want to live safely.” I believe that we can show the compassion to give him that chance, while keeping order and control in our asylum system. The Government’s current path of clearing the backlog, cutting hotel use, and increasing removals where claims have been refused deserves our full support. Most people simply want a fair, competent asylum system that commands both our conscience and our confidence.

[Lincoln Jopp (Spelthorne) (Con)]

The hon. and learned Member said he met an asylum seeker at Napier barracks who said that they just wanted to be safe. Assuming that they had come from France, did he investigate with that person why they were unsafe in France?

[Tony Vaughan]

The logic of that is that every country neighbouring a conflict zone should take all the refugees. That is an absurd proposition. We have to take our fair share of refugees. We take fewer than other European countries, and a responsible approach to this issue accepts that there is not an obligation to claim asylum in any particular country. The question is whether we are taking our fair share and complying with our international obligations—which, as I have said, the UK-France deal will achieve if it can be scaled up.

Most people want a fair, competent asylum system that processes claims in months rather than years, with a sustainable asylum support system that ultimately upholds the values that make us who we are as a nation.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

[Tony Vaughan]

I want to underline the point I made in my speech, which is that France has a six-month period before work is permitted, so there is not that pull factor, or certainly not at that point.

[Lincoln Jopp]

I thank the hon. and learned Member for his intervention.

I am going to be a bit “beggar thy neighbour”-ish, I am afraid, but my reason for highlighting the Stanwell hotel is that I believe a number of the other contracts run to two or three years longer than the one there. Given that it is Government policy to close all asylum hotels within this Parliament, I encourage the Minister to place the Stanwell hotel at the top of the list. Not only is it not good to renegotiate a contract when we do not have to, but if the Government are going to do all this in the space of this Parliament, they need to start somewhere, and I recommend that they start with the Stanwell hotel in my Spelthorne constituency.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Ashley Fox]

I hope the Government’s policy is successful. It is just that in the 12 months since they took office, the problem has got worse by 50%. I will explain why. The large numbers of young men we see crossing the channel in small boats are not refugees; they are economic migrants. They have travelled through several safe countries before reaching Calais. The reason that people are prepared to pay to cross the channel in a small boat is that they know that having reached Britain, there is virtually no prospect of their ever being deported. This Government are guilty of self-harm in closing the Rwanda scheme before it started. Had the scheme been allowed to operate and large numbers of those crossing the channel been deported to Rwanda, the economic model of the people smugglers would have been broken. Instead, Labour lets them stay indefinitely.

Labour is increasing the use of hotels in town centres. In June 2024, 29,585 people were in hotels; now, the figure is 32,059. The numbers are going in the wrong direction and we cannot allow that to continue. We should close the asylum hotels and deport illegal migrants.

[Tony Vaughan]

Does the hon. Member accept that under the Conservative Government asylum applications were essentially paused, which had a huge knock-on effect on accommodation costs and the number of people who had to be accommodated, and that that caused the crisis that we are in?

[Sir Ashley Fox]

Of course; that is part of creating a deterrent in which we say to those crossing the channel, “If you enter the country illegally, you will not be entitled to claim asylum and you will be transferred to a third country.” Interestingly, the European Union is now exploring that, and the facilities in Rwanda are currently being used by the United States, so other countries understand the need for a deterrent.

If we want to reduce the number of refugees in hotels and temporary accommodation, we need to change the way we deal with refugees. In my view, Parliament should decide how many refugees Britain accepts each year, exactly as we did with the Syria scheme. We should then provide a safe and legal route for those refugees, who should be taken exclusively from UN refugee camps. At present, we have the morally repugnant situation that millions of people are sitting in refugee camps around the world with no prospect of being rehomed, while those who jump the queue and pay money to get into a small boat are given licence to live in Britain forever. Does the Minister think that is moral? That creates a perverse incentive, which puts lives at risk, funds organised crime and stops us controlling who we let into our country. The Government must reintroduce the deterrent of deporting illegal migrants if they are ever to solve the small boats problem.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Pochin]

I will make a bit of progress. The immediate action needs to be that all these hotels are closed to illegal migrants, and that they are moved out of the community into holding centres to be processed and sent home. The conditions in which they are held in these processing centres will be humane but not luxurious. There will be no free tickets to theme parks and no free trips out into the community.

I had an asylum hotel—the Daresbury hotel—in my constituency. My campaign in the recent by-election saw the hotel eventually shut down, but the implications of shutting the hotels are that these illegal migrants are dispersed in houses of multiple occupancy in our communities. In Runcorn, we have approximately 900 illegal migrants in 80 HMOs that we know about. Once in those HMOs, they are lost to the authorities, yet still live free at the taxpayers’ expense.

[Tony Vaughan]

From the logic of what the hon. Lady is saying, we would detain everybody—we would put the 102,000 people currently in asylum accommodation in a detention centre. Does she accept that that will cost around £47 billion, which is not credible at all?

[Sarah Pochin]

I accept that we have to start doing something radical that sends a message, will stop people coming to this country, and will stop the pull factors that send people to our shores.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Peter Bedford (Mid Leicestershire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I thank the hundreds of Mid Leicestershire residents who took the time to sign the two petitions. I want to speak directly to each and every one of them: you are absolutely right to sign, and you should not feel ashamed, belittled or even embarrassed for doing so; your views come from a deep sense of national pride, a strong belief in the rule of law and, above all, a commitment to fairness. They reflect a widespread feeling that the immigration system is failing. It is failing law-abiding British citizens, the British taxpayer and the integrity of our borders. We in this place must do better. Today, I proudly stand with my constituents, who deserve better.

[Sir John Hayes in the Chair]

It is deeply disrespectful to the hard-working families in Mid Leicestershire and across the UK—who get up early, work long hours, pay their taxes and contribute to society—that individuals who come here illegally stay in hotels with access to three meals a day, healthcare and all the other benefits. Meanwhile, my constituents are struggling with the cost of living, and watching their purse strings tighten month after month. That is not sustainable, and it is simply not fair.

We must put an end to this open-door policy, which is placing unbearable pressure on our welfare system, public services and communities. We must close the hotels and deport those who are taking advantage of our system. It really is that simple—we just need a Government with the gumption to do it. As a country, we cannot continue to spend £6 million on these hotels every single day. Our once-great nation—the nation of the NHS, world-class education and the rule of law—is choosing to spend billions on illegal migrants. That is money that could be better invested in our schools, police and hospitals. Hotels that once welcomed tourists to showcase the best of Britain are now occupied by individuals who in many cases have no respect for our borders, culture or rule of law, all while veterans sleep on the streets, local economies die and housing waiting lists grow rapidly. The system simply is not fair, and it is not what the British people voted for.

What did we get from the Government in response to the petitions? Bluster, what-aboutery and a clear lack of understanding. Governments of all colours have made mistakes on migration over the past 40 years. Many new MPs, particularly on the Conservative Benches, have articulated this point brilliantly to those Members who were in the House before us.

I know that the Leader of the Opposition gets this and has a plan. First, we will end the endless lawfare surrounding illegal migration. Then, as some Members have expressed it, we will deport, deport, deport. It really is that simple. The Conservative party is united in its commitment to leave the European convention on human rights and the European convention against trafficking and repeal the Human Rights Act 1998.

[Tony Vaughan]

Does the hon. Gentleman believe that withdrawing from those conventions will actually make those things easier? There is no basis for saying so. The truth is that we need those agreements to solve the problem—the deal with France is the start of this process of having a returns agreement again.

[Mr Bedford]

Many of these agreements were established 50, 60 or 70 years ago, in a completely different world. They are completely outdated and are not applicable to modern Britain. With regard to the hon. and learned Member’s comment about the returns agreement, which has been mentioned by other hon. Members, when an agreement was in place before Brexit, we were a net recipient, so his argument simply does not hold water.

Time and again, these outdated frameworks have been used by activist do-gooders to block any form of deportation. We will never have control of our borders and do what the petitioners have asked for until we leave these conventions. A clean withdrawal from them will enable a future Government to act in a tough but fair manner for the people of Great Britain. We will not be deterred by woke protests or sneering lectures from the chattering classes; we will secure our borders and we will restore fairness.

And that is not all. A future Conservative Government will establish a dedicated removal force with real power and financial backing. That force will deport all illegal migrants within seven days of arrival, to ensure that foreign criminals have no place in the UK and to stop economic migrants abusing our system. Ultimately, we must put the British people first and restore fairness to the system.

Yes, my words today have been direct; they have been stark. That is because every petitioner from my constituency has had enough—I have had enough. It is time to stop the lawfare, deport those who have no right to be here, and restore confidence and fairness to our immigration system.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tony Vaughan]

I thank the Minister for his response, and I thank all Members who have taken part in the debate. It is extremely important for everyone who signed the petitions to see that we are listening, and that we are considering and debating these very important issues.

I am not sure I heard anyone dispute the proposition that asylum hotels need to close. They are inappropriate for people seeking asylum, as was said by my hon. Friends the Members for York Outer (Mr Charters) and for Clapham and Brixton Hill (Bell Ribeiro-Addy). They are extortionate, as we have all heard, and they contribute to the sense of unfairness in our communities, as my hon. Friends the Members for Hartlepool (Mr Brash) and for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh (Chris Murray) said; the latter pointed out that an accommodation provider appeared on the Sunday Times rich list thanks to public funds. The current situation is utterly acceptable.

I am happy to be corrected, but I also did not hear anyone specifically argue that support should be removed from people seeking asylum. However, I did hear some hon. Members—the hon. Members for Runcorn and Helsby (Sarah Pochin) and for Mid Leicestershire (Mr Bedford)—arguing against the very principle of an asylum system. That is not actually what the creators of these two petitions believe. I spoke to one of them and received quite a detailed briefing note from the other, and the way they talked to me about their concerns very much chimed with what my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool said earlier. There are concerns here, and they need to be listened to very carefully. Ultimately, they are about the communities that the petitioners live in. They have the compassion to accept that we should grant sanctuary to those fleeing persecution—I genuinely think that that is where the vast majority of British people are on this issue—but the question, of course, is how we have compassion and how we have control over our asylum system.

As the Minister said, Labour is getting on with the job of closing hotels, speeding up decision making and removing those who have no right to be here. I fully accept the challenges, but it does not lie in the mouth of the Conservative party to criticise the measures that this Government are taking to clear up the mess that the Conservatives helped to create. Brexit caused us to lose our returns agreement with the EU—I accept that it was underutilised, but nevertheless it was an agreement—the pausing of asylum decisions massively increased the application backlog, and the pressure on the asylum and accommodation system then increased massively.

The idea that we could just junk our international obligations and deport everyone if we withdrew from the treaties is complete fantasy. As I said, we need the ECHR to solve the irregular migration issue. Had we not been in the convention, the UK-France deal would not have been signed, nor would we have had the credibility to work with international partners such as Bulgaria, Germany and France on the upstream issues. We would also jeopardise peace in Northern Ireland without those measures. The truth is that the common law has set its face against torture for centuries, so I am afraid the idea that without the refugee convention and the ECHR we would be free to send a person back to torture is legal nonsense and morally repugnant, and it would make the UK an international pariah. It would also run contrary to our British values of fairness and decency.

We do need to consider innovative solutions to address the asylum support and accommodation challenges: increasing asylum decision-making capacity; providing early access to legal aid and identifying claims as early as possible; deciding appeals more quickly; expanding our housing stock and applying break clauses to accommodation contracts. We must do all those things, and we must do them more quickly. I support the Government’s approach, which the Minister set out. He knows better than anyone that winning back public confidence in our asylum system is essential. I wish him luck in that.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

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