Labour says it would ‘temporarily’ house refugees on offshore barges

Policy has been branded cruel and inhumane by rights groups

The Bibby Stockholm asylum barge (James Manning/PA) (PA Wire)

A Labour government would temporarily continue with the government's plan to house refugees on barges moored offshore, the party’s immigration minister has said.

Speaking on Sunday Stephen Kinnock said his party would be “forced” to put people on the ships for a limited period of time, perhaps six months.

Mr Kinnock said his party agreed with the government that asylum seekers should be moved out of hotel accommodation, which is the driving force behind Suella Braverman's push to house them on ships and in military camps.

The Home Office has scrambled to find alternatives to hotels amid criticism in the media and concerns over the cost of booking out the accommodation, but attempts to use bases, tents and barges have led to criticism from rights groups for “inhumanity”.

“The reality is that we’ve got 10s of thousands of people in hotels, we need to get them out of hotels and we need to get them off the barges and out of the military camps too,” Mr Kinnock told BBC Breakfast.

“Because of the complete and utter chaos and shambles of the Tory asylum crisis, we are going to have to continue in a very short-term period to use the infrastructure that is there, including the barges and the hotels.”

At the end of July, the Home Office was forced to delay its plan to move people seeking asylum onto the Bibby Stockholm barge to carry out last-minute safety checks.

It came after more than 50 organisations and campaigners, including the Refugee Council, Refugee Action, and Asylum Matters called the government’s plan for the floating accommodation “cruel and inhumane”.

Mr Kinnock said: “We will be forced to use these contingency measures because of the mess the government has made.

“I’m confident that within six months of a Labour government we will be getting on top of the backlog and clearing people out of hotels and putting them into suitable accommodation, or removing them from the country properly because they have no right to be here.”

His assertion came as Rishi Sunak was accused of “cooking the books” by removing thousands of asylum claims from the system.

The Independent reported that more than 6,000 people have been wiped off the list without being fully assessed in just three months.

Meanwhile, home secretary Suella Braverman attacked the legal profession in the Mail on Sunday newspaper, branding immigration lawyers “criminals and conmen̦ who should be in prison.

“These so-called immigration lawyers, who have been very powerfully exposed as being criminals and conmen, coaching migrants on how to lie to get through our system, how to game our system, how to play our rules, they are cheating the British people,” said Ms Braverman.

She added: “We’ve got a racket, we’ve got an industry of people who are purporting to be professional, purporting to be legitimate, but actually under the surface are lying or cheating and breaking the law, and we need to crack down on them.”