Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department has taken to ensure that asylum seekers housed in bridging hotels have access to all items outlined in Section 4 of the Home Office Guide to Living in Asylum Accommodation.

The Guide to Living in Asylum Accommodation sets out what is available for people being accommodated in asylum accommodation and who are eligible for asylum support. Those accommodated in bridging hotels have been evactuated from Afghanistan and are refugees with leave to remain in the country, they are not asylum seekers and therefore are not eligible for asylum support and so the guide does not apply to them.

In 2021 The UK Government undertook the biggest and fastest emergency evacuation in recent history, helping over 15,000 people to safety from Afghanistan. Due to the scale and pace of the evacuation we were not able to source appropriate accommodation in the normal way, we therefore had to use bridging hotels as a temporary measure. In these hotels we provide 3 meals a day for residents. All arrivals received an Aspen Card with funds equivalent to those on Universal Credit (UC). The families/individuals will then apply for UC and Aspen Cards will be terminated.