Refugee Accommodation: Move-on Period

Lord Cameron of Lochiel Excerpts

Thursday 4th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful for the noble Lord’s question. For individuals who have been granted asylum, under the pilot we have extended the period from 28 days to 56 days to ensure that transition takes place. We are now tweaking that for certain categories of individual applicants back to 28 days. In a sense, the noble Lord hits a very important point: the asylum claim has been approved, and the period—be it 28 or 56 days—is there for that transition. At the end of that period, the Government have fulfilled their responsibilities in the asylum claim approval and the hand-on period. Therefore, we need to ensure that individuals then begin their new life under their own steam.

[Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)]

My Lords, throughout the summer we all witnessed a number of protests relating to asylum accommodation, suggesting that social cohesion in certain areas is under severe pressure. Does the Minister recognise the challenges faced by local authorities and local residents’ frustration, given that the number of asylum seekers temporarily housed in hotels has increased by 8% since the end of June 2024?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I always find it fascinating that the Opposition continue to raise these questions with the Government, because if I wind the clock back to 2016, there were no hotels in use for asylum accommodation. Asylum claims rose dramatically under the previous Government and only a couple of years ago asylum hotels reached a peak of over 400, which is starting to fall now. We inherited that massive number and are trying to deal with that backlog of asylum claims, and the asylum issue as a whole, in a proper and effective way.

For me, community cohesion means the best way to deal with that is to speed up asylum claims, to ensure we close those hotels as a matter of some urgency and to determine who has the right to asylum in this country. We then give them a 56 or 28-day period of settlement and remove those individuals who have no right to reside in this country, their asylum claim having failed. With due respect to the noble Lord, the previous Government failed miserably on all those things. We are trying to do them.

People have a right to protest. But people also have a right to understand why and how we are dealing with this issue and what we are doing to resolve it to maintain community cohesion so that people welcome those who are fleeing persecution, war, starvation and the other forms of economic misery driving them to seek asylum in Europe and this country.