Military sites are set to be used to house asylum seekers under Sir Keir Starmer’s plans to stop using hotels as migrant accommodation as quickly as possible.
The Prime Minister is facing unrest from Labour MPs who are worried that the failure to prevent illegal crossings of the English Channel in small boats is proving a political boost for Reform UK.
Shabana Mahmood, the new Home Secretary, has vowed to double down on efforts to end illegal immigration, after official statistics showed 30,000 asylum seekers had reached the UK in small boats so far this year.
She said the scale of the problem was “utterly unacceptable” and promised that the first migrants will be returned to France under a new border security deal “imminently”.
Starmer has promised that by the time of the next election, asylum seekers will no longer be housed in hotels while they are waiting for their application for refugee status to be processed.
Sources close to him said that he would push ministers to achieve that goal more quickly than previously pledged, although he is not planning to set a new, more ambitious formal target.
The Prime Minister last week moved Yvette Cooper from the Home Office to the Foreign Office in an apparent acknowledgement that the Government’s policy was not working as intended.
One option being worked on to speed up the end of migrant hotel accommodation is housing asylum seekers in military sites instead.
Defence Secretary John Healey told Sky News: “With the Home Office, I have been putting military planners into their border command and into their planning for the future, and we are looking at the potential use of military and non-military sites for temporary accommodation for the people who come across on these small boats that may not have a right to be here or need to be processed rapidly before we can decide whether or not they should say or whether or not we deport them, like we have done in record numbers over the last year.”
Labour backbenchers told The i Paper that both the policy and the presentation around migration need to be improved to avoid handing a gift to Reform, which has risen in the polls amid public anger on the issue.
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One Red Wall MP said the Home Secretary should “put everything on the table” including the option of heavily restricting the ability of asylum seekers to use the European Convention on Human Rights to stay in Britain – adding: “We have not got the answer we need yet.”
Another said: “The main thing would be to look like you’re doing something, not just talk about what you’re going to do. Go out on an immigration raid, show deportation flights taking off etc. At the moment we can reel out the stats but I’m not sure people believe it.”
The number of small boats arrivals this year passed 30,000 over the weekend – the highest level on record by this point in the year. Mahmood said in response: “These small boats crossings are utterly unacceptable and the vile people smugglers behind them are wreaking havoc on our borders.
“Thanks to our deal with France, people crossing in small boats can now be detained and removed to France and I expect the first returns to take place imminently. Protecting the UK border is my priority as Home Secretary and I will explore all options to restore order to our immigration system.”
This week she will host a meeting in London with other interior ministers, including Donald Trump’s Secretary of Homeland Security, to discuss ways to co-ordinate border security.
She also showed support for the controversial decision by Cooper to ban protest group Palestine Action as a terror organisation. Mahmood visited the Metropolitan Police, and tweeted afterwards: “Supporting Palestine and supporting a proscribed terrorist group are not the same thing.”
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