Ten-point migration plan to end ‘Hotel Britain’

“HOTEL Britain”, where asylum seekers are housed at a cost of billions of pounds to the taxpayer, will be ended, the immigration minister has pledged, as the Government prepares a 10-point plan to tackle the migrant crisis.

In an exclusive article for The Sunday Telegraph, Robert Jenrick said the use of “unsuitable” hotels at an “unacceptable” cost of £5.6million a day must end as it was fuelling “asylum-shopping” economic migrants who saw Britain as a “destination of choice”.

Ministers are understood to be looking at larger and less luxurious sites including disused student accommodation, defunct or underperforming holiday parks and, possibly, budget cruise ships, as used by the Scottish Government for Ukrainian refugees.

“‘Hotel Britain’ must end, and be replaced with simple, functional accommodation that does not create an additional pull factor,” said Mr Jenrick.

He is understood to have called in the bosses of the private accommodation contractors this week to read the riot act to them over their commissioning of “unacceptable” hotels that have included stately homes charging up to £200 a night for the rooms.

Mr Jenrick is also setting up a crossgovernment taskforce to ensure accommodation is run effectively and to speed up the transfer of migrants out of it.

The Home Office faced a backlash last week from Tory MPs and councils over “unsuitable” hotels being blockbooked without prior notice in tourist towns or areas close to schools.

At least eight councils have taken or are considering legal action to block the use of hotels, of which there are now thought to be about 200 funded by the Home Office, to house as many as 37,000 migrants.

The crackdown on hotels is one of 10 prospective measures to tackle the migrant crisis, in which a record near40,000 men, women and children have crossed the Channel this year.

The biggest surge has been among Albanians, accounting for 12,000, or nearly a third of the arrivals.

Yesterday, hundreds of Albanians gathered on Westminster Bridge to demonstrate.

At one point during the protest, an Albanian man was hoisted on to the nearby statue of Winston Churchill over which he draped an Albanian flag, to cheers from the crowd.

Ministers plan a bespoke fast-track deportation scheme for Albanians, where any asylum claims are heard within days and the migrants removed.

A past Home Office fast-track scheme was declared unlawful in 2015 after court challenges but officials believe they can overcome the legal hurdles that require them to have a “realistic” prospect of removal.

This is because Britain now has a removals agreement with Albania and it can be treated as a “safe” country.

“Those coming from safe countries such as Albania – whose citizens account for 30 per cent of illegal crossings this year – must see that crossing the Channel in small boats is not a path to a life here,” said Mr Jenrick.

“The record number of arrivals, and the prospect of further increases, require us to overhaul the system to ensure our laws are appropriate.”

It is thought one option being considered is to change the law to treat Albania like an EU country, which would mean migrants from the Balkan state would not be entitled to claim asylum.

Ministers are also proposing to rewrite Theresa May’s Modern Slavery Act, which has been used by Albanian migrants to remain in the UK while their claims are considered, a process that can take more than a year.

Albanians are the biggest nationality

making modern slavery claims, with a 90 per cent success rate.

Reforms could include raising the threshold of proof for a claim to be considered, restricting last-minute claims and potentially a change in the law to disapply Albanians from eligibility to claim to be victims of modern slavery.

Mr Jenrick said: “We need to ensure that our modern slavery laws are fit for purpose and cannot be exploited by illegitimate claimants.

“The number of people claiming to be a victim of modern slavery is at an all-time high and the UK attracts more than 10 times the number of modern slavery claims compared with France and Germany.

Last-minute modern slavery claims clog the system and of those who apply 90 per cent are approved.

“We are committed to protecting victims and bringing more perpetrators to justice, but we must also be able to tackle the abuses of our system which are detracting from our ability to provide refuge to those in genuine need. We will be compassionate, but not naive,” Mr Jenrick said.

Central to the 10-point plan will be a new agreement with France that will increase the number of patrols on northern French beaches, potentially double the number of migrants prevented from leaving French shores and, for the first time, station British officials in joint control centres in France to share live intelligence.

Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, with Gérald Darmanin, her French counterpart, is expected to announce the £60million-plus deal tomorrow.

Mr Jenrick said that ministers remained committed to deporting migrants to Rwanda to claim asylum, a policy stalled by a High Court challenge, and was exploring “similar agreements with other countries to break the business model of the smuggling gangs”.

Wider changes to the law to help underpin the policy are being considered and were foreshadowed by Mrs Braverman when she pledged to “bring forward legislation” to ensure anyone arriving illegally in the UK would be “swiftly returned to your home country or relocated to Rwanda”.

The four final measures include a drive to tackle the backlog of more than 130,000 asylum applications. It cost the taxpayer more than £2.1 billion last year to house and feed claimants.

Mr Jenrick said that it had created an incentive for “illegitimate” claims because they knew they were “unlikely ever to be removed”.