Asylum hotels can be closed earlier than key government date, Yvette Cooper says

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper says ‘we do believe it can be done earlier’ when quizzed on the government’s 2029 date to end the use of hotels housing asylum seekers

Hotels housing asylum seekers can be closed quicker than planned, Yvette Cooper has insisted.

The Home Secretary, who is working towards an existing deadline of 2029, said the government believes it “can be done earlier” when quizzed on Tuesday.

It comes after Keir Starmer said he wanted to move all asylum seekers out of hotel accommodation before the deadline – as he recognised public “frustration”. The PM said: “We’ve said we’ll get rid of them by the end of the Parliament. I would like to bring that forward, I think it is a good challenge.”

Ms Cooper said today: “Our manifesto commitment was to do so over the course of the Parliament, but we do want that to be earlier, and we’ve been working for some time. We do believe it can be done earlier. It’s dependent on a whole series of factors, so we’re not setting out precise timetables. What we are doing is setting out the steps that we are taking.”

READ MORE: Keir Starmer slams Nigel Farage’s ‘scaremongering’ as he makes pledge to British families

Latest figures show there were over 32,000 asylum seekers being accommodated in hotels at the end of June – down from over 56,000 under the Tories.

But the government has been under growing pressure to close the hotels after a series of ugly clashes outside the accommodation and legal fights over the The Bell Hotel in Epping.

Pressed on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, Ms Cooper said: “We need to end asylum hotels and we think it can be done more quickly than the course of the Parliament, though that was our manifesto commitment by the end of the Parliament.”

Asked where they would be housed, she added: “We are increasing returns. We’ve got a 28% increase in failed asylum seekers being returned, that’s really important. We’re also increasing the detention estate so that we can increase those returns further.

“We’ve got to reduce the number of people in the asylum system altogether – that is at the heart of this. The system we inherited, the decision-making had frozen. If we carried on with that we’d have had tens of thousands more people in asylum hotels by now. Now what we need to do is get those overall numbers down.”

The Home Secretary also declined to guarantee that migrants will definitely be sent back across the Channel this month as part of a recent returns agreement with France. She told the Commons on Monday that the first returns under the deal were expected later this month, with detentions having already taken place.

Asked by Sky News for a more exact date in September when this would take place, Ms Cooper replied: “It will be later this month.” Pressed for a guarantee, she replied: “We expect the first returns to take place this month. But I’ve always said from the very beginning on this, it’s a pilot scheme and it needs to build up over time.”

She contrasted her “practical and sensible” approach with that of the previous Conservative government on Rwanda, which “spent £700 million and sent four volunteers after running it for two years”.

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