Migrants in hotels for up to three years, report suggests

Migrants could be housed in hotels for up to three more years because of the asylum backlog, it has been reported.

The Times newspaper said on Monday evening that since winning the election Home Secretary Yvette Cooper and other ministers have realised that clearing the backlog will take longer than they had hoped.

The party had pledged to clear it and “end asylum hotels” but a Whitehall source told the Times that the it is “much worse than we thought”.

“It’s going to take a lot longer to clear than we anticipated. It certainly won’t be cleared in a year,” they added.

A Labour source said: “We have inherited a completely failed immigration system from the Tories. Including them spending over £700 million on Rwanda, and gimmicks that didn’t work. We’re working on clearing down the backlog they left behind, they clearly did nothing at all in the months before the election.

“The numbers speak for themselves.”

According to Home Office figures released in August, a total of 118,882 people were waiting for an initial decision on an asylum application in the UK at the end of June 2024, down by 32% from 175,457 at the end of June 2023, which was the highest figure since current records began in 2010.

But the latest total was up slightly from the 118,329 waiting to be dealt with at the end of March this year, indicating a rise in the last three months of the 12-month period.

Earlier this month, Ms Cooper told broadcasters that the Government was making progress on clearing the asylum backlog and returning those with no right to be in the UK “so that we can end these very costly asylum hotels”.

The Labour manifesto released ahead of the general election said that the party would “restore order to the asylum system so that it operates swiftly, firmly and fairly”.

“We will hire additional caseworkers to clear the Conservatives’ backlog and end asylum hotels, saving the taxpayer billions of pounds,” the manifesto said.

It comes as figures show the total number of Channel crossings for September (4,192) was the lowest recorded for the month since 2020.

According to PA news agency analysis of government data, the number of crossings seen between July and September (11,755) was also lower than the equivalent period for the last two years.

During those three months in 2022, some 20,301 people made the journey, followed by 13,397 for the same period in 2023.

Contributing factors could include the poor weather conditions over the summer, with several wet and windy days potentially preventing crossings taking place compared with previous years.

More than 25,000 migrants have arrived in the UK after crossing the Channel so far this year.

Provisional Home Office data shows that, as of Monday, 25,244 people have made the journey in 2024.

This is 2% higher than this time last year (24,830) but 24% down on the same period in 2022 (33,029).