Immigration minister 'should resign' over migrant hotels

A Tory MP has said Robert Jenrick should resign as immigration minister after the government allegedly moved asylum seekers into a hotel in his constituency with “mould and no kitchen facilities”.

Philip Hollobone, the MP for Kettering, told MPs that dozens of asylum seekers were moved into a hotel in the town on Sunday that had “serious environmental health issues”.

These had been raised at a meeting with the Home Office and Serco, a government contractor, two days earlier, he said, and it was agreed that the hotel “would not be used until these issues were properly addressed”.

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At the meeting Northants Police also “raised serious concerns about community safety and the vulnerability of asylum seekers themselves”, Mr Hollobone said.

Then on Tuesday North Northamptonshire council was told that 41 asylum seekers had been moved in on Sunday afternoon “with no notification at all”.

That number could rise to 80, he said.

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“This is a wrong-headed decision – the local police, the local council and I have been misled and I have no confidence at all that the Home Office, Serco or the minister himself have the first clue of what they are doing in relation to this asylum seeker relocation,” Mr Hollobone said, adding that Mr Jenrick “should consider his position”.

Henry Smith, another Tory MP, called the Home Office “dysfunctional” and asked when it would “get a grip and deal with the core problem that this government has caused”.

The MP for Crawley said a “significant number” of hotels in his constituency had been used to house migrants, with one booked until July 2024.

This was “starting to cause community tensions and also having an impact on the business community with those hotels not being able to be used”, he said.

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‘Immense pressure’

Mr Jenrick acknowledged there were “a number of serious issues” that the Home Office has to work on, including cutting the backlog of asylum cases, getting people out of hotels and finding decent but value-for-money accommodation.

He disputed, however, Mr Smith’s claim that the government had caused the problem, saying: “The primary focus of our attention should be on the tens of thousands of people who are crossing the Channel illegally.”

Accommodation for asylum seekers has become a focus in recent weeks because of serious overcrowding at a processing centre in Kent.

The Home Office confirmed yesterday that the Manston centre, which is designed to hold 1,600 people for no more than 24 hours, was now empty.

Three weeks ago about 4,000 people were there, with some staying for days.

The Home Office said civil servants had been “working tirelessly” to find other accommodation.

More than 40,000 people have crossed the Channel this year, thousands more than the 28,561 who came over the whole of last year.

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