Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to reduce the use of hotels to house asylum seekers.

This Government inherited an asylum system under exceptional strain, with tens of thousands of people stuck in limbo without any prospect of having their claims processed. At their peak use under the previous government, in the autumn of 2023, more than 400 asylum hotels were being leased by the Home Office, at a cost of almost £9 million a day.

Inevitably, due to the size of the backlog we inherited, the Government has been forced to continue with the use of hotels for the time being. This is not a permanent solution, and the small increase in the number in use at the end of last year was a temporary but necessary step to manage pressures in the system, which is now in the process of being reversed.

It remains our absolute commitment to end the use of hotels over time, as part of our reduction in overall asylum accommodation costs.