Labour promise to ‘end asylum hotels' is worthless… Reeves will be turfed out long before last asylum seeker leaves B&B

The Sun

21 hours ago

AS election manifesto pledges go, it was as ­simple and straightforward as they get: Labour will 'end asylum hotels, saving the taxpayer billions of pounds'.
No wriggle room there, you might think. Not SOME asylum hotels, ALL of them.
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And, given the current huge annual cost of housing Channel migrants, that would surely save taxpayers money. Simple!
Well, sorry to be the bearer of bad — and expensive — news, but apparently not.
After 11 months in office, Chancellor Rachel Reeves gave a helpful update this week on that vow to the British people during her Spending Review, and added in the teeny-tiny oh-so-insignificant caveat that it wouldn't actually happen until 2029.
That's four long years away. It also means many more billions of pounds of taxpayers' money being thrown away.
After all, the Government is currently forking out more than £4BILLION a year to house illegal migrants, some of whom have arrived on small boats, and even by 2029 asylum costs are STILL predicted to top £2.5billion a year — with or without a hotel room in sight.
After the Tories failed to deliver on their ­promise to stop putting asylum seekers in hotels, we have every right to be cynical.
Indeed, they were happily paying for expensive four-star rooms until that was exposed to widespread public fury.
But even if Labour do actually keep their manifesto pledge by 2029, what does 'ending ­asylum hotels' actually mean?
Let's look at the best-case scenario. Let's ­imagine a world where Home Office officials go to warp speed to process the massive backlog of asylum seekers who are currently waiting years to learn their fate.
Will that mean we can finally stop paying for their accommodation? Almost ­certainly not.
Windows smashed at migrant hotel as UK braces for another night of violence
Although Britain already grants asylum at a far higher rate than most other European countries (indeed, it offers asylum to those who've already failed to win it elsewhere in Europe), tens of thousands of claims from ­undocumented economic migrants are still likely to be refused.
So will that mean those failed asylum seekers will be packed off home and finally off our books?
Nope. Unless their own countries agree to take them back and their safety can be guaranteed in places like Iran, Afghanistan or Eritrea, then I'm afraid they will be staying right here.
What about shipping them off to third countries, like Rwanda or Albania, if they won't go home?
Again, that's a non-starter under Sir Keir Starmer, whose human rights lawyer chums will have a field day arguing for failed asylum seekers' rights to a family life in Britain.
Staying right here
If it turns out that the thousands of young men who pay people-smugglers to get on dinghies to come to our shores are NOT in fact all brilliant rocket scientists, brain surgeons and engineers, they will ­probably end up working in low-wage jobs, often in the black economy, needing benefits and will likely remain a drain on taxpayers for the rest of their lives.
Anyway, even if the Home Office could manage to deal with the existing backlog, what are they going to do about the ­thousands of new asylum seekers who are arriving from the beaches of Calais every week?
This year has so far seen the highest ever number of illegal immigrants crossing the ­Channel, with no sign — despite Sir Keir Starmer's promises — of the smuggling gangs being smashed any time soon.
It doesn't really matter where these ­people live; once they set foot on our beaches, we will end up footing the bill one way or another
Julia Hartley-Brewer
OK, fair enough, but at least by 2029 we won't be paying for these new arrivals to live in hotels any more.
True, but they will need to live somewhere.
Unless the Government is secretly planning to send them off to the Falklands or give them all tents and plonk them in a field in the middle of nowhere, that means paying for their accommodation and other living costs.
If officials are not going to pay for hotels, then more and more asylum ­seekers will end up being moved into ­private rented flats and houses in a street near you.
This is already happening in many towns and cities, as companies such as Serco, Mears and Clearsprings have been handed multi-million pound contracts to strike deals with local landlords to house asylum seekers.
Hope we won't notice
Using our hard-earned taxes, they often pay far above (sometimes even double) local market rents, with guaranteed leases for five years, with all utilities and any other costs paid for by taxpayers, and pushing rents beyond the means of ­countless local ­families.
Getting asylum seekers out of hotels also brings the added bonus that the cost of thousands of individual private rentals are rather easier to hide from the public than enormous Home Office hotel bills totalling billions.
And after the Channel migrants are ­processed and allowed to stay — with or ­without asylum status — they can then be quietly shunted on to the general benefits bill or on to local councils' housing costs in the hope that we won't notice or care any more.
Like so many manifestos, the promise to 'end asylum hotels' isn't worth the glossy paper it is printed on.
It doesn't really matter where these ­people live; once they set foot on our beaches, we will end up footing the bill one way or another for years to come.
We don't know how many more Channel migrants will turn up this week, this year or by 2029, so we can't know how much that bill will be.
But the one thing we can say for certain is that Rachel Reeves will be turfed out of the Treasury long before the last asylum seekers are turfed out of their hotel.
HOMELESS TENT CITIES ON WAY
DON'T look now but the Deputy Prime Minister, Angela Rayner, has had another brilliant idea.
This time, her clever plan is to tackle the rising problem of rough sleeping on our streets by decriminalising it.
She plans to repeal the 1824 Vagrancy Act which, for two centuries, has made it a criminal act to sleep rough, raising fears that we will soon see tent cities pop up in our parks and streets, similar to those in San Francisco.
Ms Rayner says these people are not criminals but 'vulnerable' victims of 'injustice'. Indeed, this is true for many. In the first three months of this year, 4,427 people spent at least one night sleeping on the streets of our capital.
Many of them are drug addicts or alcoholics, while ­others are service veterans who are ­victims of both PTSD and a bureaucracy that just doesn't care.
Making it easier for people to sleep on the streets won't solve THEIR problems – but it will create more problems for everyone else.