Andy Burnham's plan to move asylum seekers to middle-class parts of the country has provoked outrage. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch accused the Prime Minister of punishing communities that voted for opposition parties. She said: “Burnham has chosen to put illegal migrants in quiet middle-class villages that don’t vote Labour.”
The Real Problem
However, the need to house asylum seekers is just a symptom of the real problem - which is the decision to let them stay in this country in the first place. No government so far has had the required guts and determination to get asylum seeker numbers down significantly. If we did that, the debate about where they should live - hotels or tower blocks, big cities or small villages - wouldn’t matter half as much.
Asylum Support Numbers
When Labour came to power in 2024 there were 100,995 people receiving what the Government calls “asylum support”. These are asylum seekers who get help to stop them starving or going homeless. There were 28,561 in hotels and 61,778 in what’s called “dispersal accommodation”, which can include a flat or a shared house. The Home Office pays private firms such as Mears Group, Serco and Clearsprings to find this housing.
Progress on 'Smashing the Gangs'
Former Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer promised to “smash the gangs”, meaning the people-smuggling gangs sending dinghies full of asylum seekers across the Channel. Latest figures show 97,519 people are receiving asylum support, so the figure is down a bit but a long way from “smashed”. Labour can claim it’s had some success in closing hotels. The number is down by almost 8,000, with 20,885 currently in hotels. But that just means more people have been moved into dispersed accommodation - and this number is up by almost 7,000, to 68,719. In other words, asylum seekers have been moved out of hotels and into residential streets.
Need to Speed Up Removals
It’s no wonder the communities affected are unhappy. And I guess you could argue that if we’re going to do this at all, perhaps it’s only fair that the asylum seekers are spread evenly around the country. But this completely misses the real answer, which is to speed up the process of getting people out of the country entirely. Our courts are clogged up with cases. But most of these are people appealing against a decision to deny their asylum claim. In other words, when a claim is refused, people just continue living in this country and launch an appeal. There’s no good reason why they need to be in the UK while that is happening. The last Conservative government had the right idea when it spoke about sending claimants to Rwanda. Instead of debating whether asylum seekers should be living in British cities or British villages, we should get them out of Britain entirely.
