The extortionate cost of housing migrants

Labour’s answer to the migration crisis is to call for the asylum process to be accelerated. Yet as more people seek to enter the country by way of boats across the Channel, the entire system has been overwhelmed. This is why the Government wants to circumvent it using powers in the new Bill announced this week. But that will take time to get through Parliament, especially the House of Lords, and thousands more will continue to arrive.

Where are they to go while the legislation is being debated and the inevitable legal challenges are under way in the courts? The Government was until recently housing them in camps, such as the defunct airfield at Manston, but was criticised over the conditions in which the migrants were kept. Instead, hotels were requisitioned with thousands of rooms now occupied, shutting them off to normal holidaymakers and business guests. The number of migrants the Home Office houses in hotels has increased from 2,600 to more than 50,000 in two years.

The cost is phenomenal. As we report today, the Home Office has had to find an extra £2 billion to pay for it all, from a combination of money from the Treasury and efficiency savings, and the expectation is that hotels will be needed until 2025 even after the Bill becomes law.

Migration organisations who objected to the camps have subsequently denounced the use of hotels because young migrants have been leaving them, especially Albanians targeted by the criminals who brought them here to begin with. But if not camps or hotels, how do they propose to house the thousands more certain to arrive this year? They are also against sending them to Rwanda.

There are hopes that today’s Anglo-french summit in Paris might see agreement on a new initiative to crack down on traffickers. France maintains that it has done what it can in increasing police patrols of some 200 miles of coastline used by the gangs, and will demand even more funding if it is to expand them. A deal on returning migrants to France looks highly unlikely.

Rishi Sunak has taken a bold approach to this issue. But he also needs to consider the domestic implications. Why should people have their holiday plans wrecked because rooms are taken up by illegal migrants? The Government needs to apply the same determination to setting up camps – and not wait until 2025 to end the use of hotels.