Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to increase the availability of volume of adequate accommodation for people seeking asylum.

The current global pandemic has presented significant challenges when it comes to the provision of asylum accommodation, including sourcing sufficient suitable accommodation to meet demand. The use of hotels and wider government facilities is a short-term measure and we are working with our accommodation providers to move people to longer-term dispersal accommodation as soon as it becomes available.

The Home Office has been working with asylum accommodation providers, Local Authorities and Strategic Migration Partnerships to increase the amount of accommodation available for asylum seekers so we can eliminate the need for the use of contingency accommodation.

We are grateful to those local authorities who participate in the dispersal scheme and will continue to work in partnership with them to procure suitable accommodation.

Sadly, many local authorities do not currently participate in the dispersal scheme, making it harder to procure sufficient dispersal accommodation. I would encourage them to step up and play their part in the UK-wide effort to provide accommodation to those seeking asylum who would otherwise be destitute.