Rachel Reeves pledges to finish use of asylum lodges by finish of this parliament | EUROtoday

Rachel Reeves has pledged that the federal government will not home migrants in asylum lodges by 2029.

Outlining her spending overview plans to MPs on Wednesday, Ms Reeves stated that ministers would finish “the costly use of hotels to house asylum seekers in this parliament”.

She stated she was working with Home Secretary Yvette Cooper to finish the expensive scheme, which sees “billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money spent on housing asylum seekers in hotels, leaving people in limbo and shunting the cost of failure onto local communities”.

Ms Reeves advised MPs that plans to chop the asylum backlog, hear extra asylum enchantment instances, and return individuals to their dwelling nations would save £1bn per yr.

In Labour’s manifesto, the occasion pledged to finish the usage of asylum lodges and it has been medium-sized websites, resembling pupil lodging blocks and former care houses, as various sources of lodging.

The public spending watchdog just lately predicted that the price of asylum lodging would triple to £15.3bn over 10 years. Original estimates on the associated fee totalled £4.5bn for 2019-2029, however the National Audit Office (NAO) revised this as much as £15.3bn.

They stated that round 110,000 individuals looking for asylum had been housed by the Home Office in December 2024 – with some 38,000 of those residing in lodges.

The most senior civil servant within the Home Office stated earlier this yr that the division was aiming to get asylum lodge use down “to zero” by the tip of this parliament. However, Sir Matthew Rycroft, who has now left the highest job, predicted that “ups and downs” would possibly have an effect on that promise.

He stated: “I do not think you should expect a gradual decline of that number down to zero neatly by the end of this parliament”.

Home Office minister Dame Angela Eagle has stated that the division is at present exploring other ways of housing individuals. She advised MPs on Tuesday that she had “clocked the break clauses” within the authorities’s massive migrant lodge contracts, and that she was different choices through pilot schemes.

She added: “The idea with medium sites is things like old voided tower blocks, or old teaching training colleges or old student accommodation that isn’t being used, where you could have numbers of rooms that are more than you get with dispersed accommodation”.

Labour has moved away from Conservative plans to make use of massive websites, resembling former army websites and the controversial Bibby Stockholm barge.

The Home Office can be prioritising the processing of asylum claims and issuing extra choices, that means extra people who find themselves refused asylum are evicted from lodges.

Shadow chancellor Mel Stride responded to Ms Reeves’ overview, saying: “The Home Office budget gets squandered on asylum costs because this government simply doesn’t have a plan on illegal migration.”

Former chief secretary to the treasury, Simon Clarke, stated that the pledge to finish lodge use may see asylum seekers moved into dispersal lodging as an alternative. He claimed this may “inevitably mean a major net transfer of them to the North and Midlands”.