What is behind the row over asylum hotels?

140,000 applicants are waiting to learn their future but the home secretary wants to speed up the process, says Sean O’Grady

Asylum-seekers protesting outside a Home Office hotel (AFP via Getty Images)

Britain’s asylum process is in the spotlight once more, as The Independent reveals applicants cannot be told their status until they are out of ad-hoc hotel accommodation.

Why are asylum seekers living in hotels?

The government pleads it is because of the sheer weight of numbers now arriving in small boats – though to some extent it merely represents a switch from the previous flow of arrivals in the back of lorries and vans.

A more immediate reason is the slowness of the processing system – including, as The Independent reveals, the perverse workings of a particular Home Office rule about informing people of their refugee status. It means refugees are kept in hotel accommodation after their case has been assessed, and without them actually knowing that the outcome has been positive.

How many people are involved?

Some 140,000 people are waiting to be told about their future. The home secretary, Suella Braverman, has said the civil servants are making decisions too slowly, telling a parliamentary committee: “Frankly, their productivity is too low.”

How does this create so much difficulty?

The moment an asylum applicant has been informed that they have been given leave to remain in the UK, they qualify for housing assistance from a local authority. Of course, many will opt to legally work and find their own places to stay, but some will be unable to do so. So it may be that the Home Office is trying to reduce the pressure on councils to find social housing or possibly pay for hotel or B&B places. But in any case, the effect is to slow the processing and resettlement of people.

The Home Office policy states: “Granting protection status for claimants currently in contingency accommodation, such as hotels, can put local authorities under untenable pressure as they will be required by law to find permanent accommodation for that claimant.”

The department maintains that the system “in no way impacted the asylum backlog, which has been caused by record numbers of people seeking asylum in the UK.”

What is wrong with hotels?

Nothing in principle, but they’re not a suitable long term answer for anyone seeking to start a new life, find work and start a family and get on with the sorts of things most people wish to. The taxpayer also has to pay around £7m a day to hoteliers, and there is sometimes local resentment, whipped up by extremist groups who engage in harassing and filming refugees where they find them. The stories of children being kidnapped from hotels and of some refugees removing their ankle tags highlight other problems with use of hotels.

What’s the answer to the problem?

There are two approaches. The government’s attitude is that the emphasis should be on stemming the flow of arrivals through a combination of physical patrols and prevention along the north French coast; and a policy of deterrence, such as the Rwanda deportation scheme. They call this “breaking the business model” of the people-traffickers. Recently, immigration minister Robert Jenrick has been accused of wanting to revive the Theresa May-era ‘hostile environment’ policy with a crackdown on asylum applicants working in the gig economy - something of an economic inevitability at a time of a severe shortage of labour. Jenrick has said the government will “use every available power” to ensure “only those eligible can work, receive benefits or access public services”, and will focus on such areas as bank accounts and driving licences. Recent experience suggests that control and deterrence doesn’t work particularly well if people are prepared to lose their lives in the freezing waters of the English Channel in the first place.

The alternative approach is to expand and build purpose-built and more secure accommodation so that refugees who have a valid and accepted claim can move out immediately and contribute to society and the economy.

Is there any sign of consensus?

Yes. At last, after a series of scandals in the transit camps, the government has adopted Labour’s suggestion of putting resources into processing asylum cases quickly. When some arrivals have to wait many months or even years to be adjudicated, they have the opportunity to find work in the informal economy, and by the time their claim is rejected they have earned the money they came to the UK for. So Braverman says she is doubling the numbers of case-workers, but the stress of the job means burnout and turnover is high. The government has also revisited the question of safe and legal routes proposed by the opposition parties; but with limits attached.

Did Brexit make a difference?

This is hotly disputed. The irony is that much free movement of labour from the EU was orderly, lawful, and beneficial to the economy. Those flows have now been reduced, and there has been more legal points-based immigration into the UK from non-EU countries as well as the special refugee schemes for Hong Kong, Afghanistan and Ukraine.

As for irregular flows of asylum seekers, it is no longer possible for them to be returned to EU states under the Dublin III convention. Brexiteers say that relatively few were turned back in practice – possibly because their claims were accepted.

In broad terms, so-called illegal migration (40,000 to 50,000 per year) amounts to about one tenth of lawful net migration, around half a million last year, a higher than usual total.

Want happens next?

The government is preparing yet another piece of legislation, designed to restrict the right to seek asylum in the first place in domestic law. In a keynote speech last year, Rishi Sunak suggested that the numbers of refugees would effectively be capped and restricted to approved schemes designed with the UN High Commission on Refugees: “The only way to come to the UK for asylum will be through safe and legal routes. And as we get a grip of illegal migration, we will create more of those routes.

“We will work with the UNHCR to identify those most in need so the UK remains a safe haven for the most vulnerable. And we will introduce an annual quota on numbers set by parliament in consultation with local authorities to determine our capacity and amendable in the face of humanitarian emergencies.”

Mr Sunak also made ‘stop the boats’ one of his five key pledges for 2023 – a target so crude and ambitious it may prove impossible to achieve.

Overarching everything that the authorities do are Britain’s internal legal obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights and other UN conventions. Ms Braverman has made no secret of her desire to take Britain out of the 1951 convention, but thus far successive prime ministers have drawn back from taking the final step.