Britain's asylum system will be thrown into chaos if there are no more hotels, minister says | Immigration and Asylum

The asylum system will be thrown into chaos if Labor refuses to open more hotels for people seeking refuge in the UK, the Home Secretary has told the Guardian.

Border Security and Asylum Minister Angela Eagle said officials had had to find more private accommodation for new arrivals and blamed a backlog of tens of thousands of cases that had built up under the last government.

The government's decision to open asylum hotels despite Keir Starmer's pledge to close them has been condemned by Tories and Reform.

In Labour's election manifesto, Starmer said he would save taxpayers billions of pounds by abolishing asylum hotels.

On Thursday, hundreds of people were removed from the BB Stockholm barge and taken to hotels across the country.

Asylum seekers were also seen moving into two hotels in Berkshire and Greater Manchester after the Home Office received ministerial approval.

In his first public comments on the development, Eagle said ministers had no choice but to take temporary measures after discovering there were around 120,000 unprocessed asylum claims since Labor came to power.

She said: It is our commitment to end the use of asylum hotels and house people in more cost-effective and suitable accommodation in the community. However, due to the size of the existing backlog, we have no choice but to use hotels in the meantime. This is not a permanent solution. This is a necessary but temporary measure to ensure that the system does not fall into chaos.

When this government came to power last July, we had tens of thousands of cases completely stagnant, unaddressed and unaddressed, and record numbers of people arriving in small boats in the first half of 2019. We inherited an asylum system under exceptional tension. sun.

The Home Secretary took immediate action, including resuming asylum processing and scrapping unworkable Rwandan policies. This would save taxpayers about $4 billion over the next two years, she said.

Labor knows that keeping asylum seekers in hotels can quickly become a detrimental problem. Several hotels were targeted by far-right activists during last summer's riots.

The latest figures from June show about 30,000 migrants living in more than 250 hotels at a cost of $4.2 million a day.

Since then, more than 15,000 people seeking asylum have arrived across the Channel, many of whom must be accommodated in hotels.

At the same time, the final months of the Conservative government saw a surge in the number of people applying for asylum, with their claims still outstanding.

Figures show there was a backlog of 118,882 people at the end of June 2024, compared to 27,000 in 2018. After Labor scrapped the Rwanda policy, analysis by the Refugee Council found the backlog was expected to be 118,063 in January 2025. If only the previous government had continued the same policy.

In fact, most asylum decisions after March 2023 were suspended under the previous government's illegal migration laws.

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In a bid to restart processing, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has put in place a legal mechanism to end the retrospective nature of the law's provisions, allowing the Home Office to begin processing cases.

In the longer term, Cooper is looking at multi-family homes, family properties, former nursing homes and student accommodation that could accommodate asylum seekers.

Returning to hotels to house asylum seekers in the short term is fraught with risk. The far-right has targeted hotels where asylum seekers are staying in recent unrest.

Voter anger over asylum hotels in the last parliament sparked a backlash against Tory MPs and proved a rallying point for reform.

Last week, after reports that more hotels would open, shadow home secretary James Cleverly said: The Conservative government has closed 150 asylum hotels and prepared flights to Rwanda.

But Labor has scrapped our deterrents from day one and is now breaking another promise it made to the British people by reopening asylum hotels costing more than $4 million a day.

The Home Office plans to save an additional $200 million per year on asylum costs in 2024-25, and $700 million over the 2025-26 financial year compared to 2024-25 levels.

Combined, these actions will save more than $4 billion over the 24-25 and 25-26 days compared to previous spending trajectories.

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