Immigration and Asylum Bill (Fifteenth sitting)

Paul Kohler Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 3rd November 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Blake Stephenson (Mid Bedfordshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Barker. I will speak to new clauses 64 and 65, which were tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Stamford (Alicia Kearns) and me, and to new clauses 30 and 31.

Everyone in this Committee wants to see the end of asylum hotels. The Government’s plan is to move people on to large sites—former military bases housing hundreds at a time. As we have heard, new clauses 30 and 31 would require consultation and published costs first. The Opposition are sympathetic to the arguments that the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough has just made, but consultation and costs alone are not enough. Communities need to know that the risks have been properly assessed and that when something goes wrong, it will be acted upon. It is not fair to leave communities feeling unsafe and ignored.

That is what new clause 64 would do. Before any site for 300 or more people is designated or significantly expanded, the Home Secretary would have to publish a local impact and safeguarding assessment after consulting the council, the police, the NHS and fire services. That assessment would ensure the identification of foreseeable risks to public safety before a site is approved, not afterwards. It would set out the pressure a site would place on policing, healthcare, social care, housing and education, and the additional funding, staffing and resources needed to manage it, so that local services are not left to absorb an unsustainable burden with no warning and no plan.

It would also close a significant gap in the law. Currently, there is no requirement to assess the impact of such sites on community wellbeing or local safety. Decisions with enormous consequences for towns or villages can be taken without the public having any say at all. That is totally unacceptable. Under new clause 64, large sites and significant increases in capacity would face proper scrutiny before approval and because the assessment would be published, local people could see for themselves what the effects are likely to be and what plans are in place to ensure those impacts will be mitigated. I hope the Committee recognises how new clause 64 would deliver transparency and accountability for communities and taxpayers.

New clause 65 deals with what happens once a site is open. It would require providers to report serious incidents to the police, including instances of serious violence, sexual offences, physical injuries, credible threats of violence and cases where children or vulnerable adults are at risk. Failing to do so would be an offence itself. There is currently no statutory duty at all, and recent reporting has shown that serious incidents have too often gone unreported. The new clause would set clear reporting requirements and ensure consistency so that practice no longer varies from one provider to the next. It would create a record of when an incident became known, when it was reported and what action was taken. It would require the Government to set clear rules for how incident information is reported, handled and shared.

The situation in Epping last year showed us what happens when communities lose confidence and feel that risks are not being assessed and incidents are not being acted upon. It is obvious that large sites in communities concentrate significant risk. They need clear, consistent, enforced rules.

How many large sites do the Government plan to open and where? Is there any duty on providers currently to report serious incidents to the police? I will push new clauses 64 and 65 to a vote, and I hope that the Committee recognises their importance for our communities and constituents across the country.

[Mr Paul Kohler (Wimbledon) (LD)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Mrs Barker. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough and the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire completely, but I want to make a separate point. I have some sympathy for the Minister. Last week, we rightly criticised the Government’s approach on hotels; now, we are rightly criticising their approach on large sites. The argument might be, “Well, what are the Government expected to do?” I urge them to take a wholly different approach.

A few weeks ago, the Home Affairs Committee went to Denmark. Denmark is often seen as hardcore on immigration issues, but it is far subtler than that. Their approach to asylum accommodation is so very different. Rather than the neoliberal obsession with outsourcing and making the asylum billionaire Graham King millions, if not billions, Denmark uses non-governmental organisations. The Red Cross runs the asylum centres rather than private enterprise making a profit. They run on a not-for-profit basis. If they make a profit, the money goes back into the asylum centre or is given back to the Government.

That wholly changes the tone. In Denmark, we saw local people not protesting against asylum centres, but volunteering to work in them. One asylum centre was being closed and local people petitioned for it to be kept open. We could change the whole nature of the debate if we went to NGOs rather than private providers to deliver the accommodation—accommodation that I accept is needed, although the Government must improve and speed up their processing of claims.

[Anna Turley]

I appreciate the contributions this morning. As Members across the House will know, when the Government entered office in 2024, the use of hotels to house asylum seekers was widespread. That was clearly impacting the confidence that the public had in the Government to run an efficient and cost-effective asylum system.

Hotels are a visceral and visual representation of the previous Government’s failure to establish any form of coherent strategy for dealing with the issue of asylum accommodation. Hotels taken away from communities act as lightning rods for social unrest. They represent the removal of a lever that the local population can use to promote tourism, incentivise wider interest in the area and promote the broader economic and business growth of the community.

That is why we are working relentlessly to house asylum seekers fairly across the country, and we have a manifesto commitment to close every asylum hotel, just as the public expects. We have already saved £1 billion for the taxpayer by reducing the number of hotels down to, I think, fewer than 160. I look forward to closing the remaining few over the next couple of years.

Hotel exit is not simply about closing hotels; it is about moving to a more sustainable accommodation model, moving asylum seekers into alternative accommodation, including former military sites, to reduce impact on local communities. As part of that commitment, we are looking at a range of more appropriate sites that provide basic and safe accommodation, including ex-military sites.

To answer the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire, two sites are already operational: Wethersfield, which was opened under his Government, and more recently, Crowborough. Three more are in the pipeline, undergoing various reviews and planning permissions. Those sites provide basic and safe accommodation for asylum seekers and are designed to be as self-sufficient as possible, reducing the impact upon communities. I must reiterate that large sites offer a sustainable solution for housing asylum seekers. They allow for dedicated on-site services such as health and safeguarding services, which lessen reliance on overstretched local facilities.

In terms of security, the safety of local communities, the staff who work there and those accommodated on large sites are of the utmost importance. Unlike hotels, ex-military sites allow for dedicated safeguarding and oversight services, reducing disruption to local communities and ensuring public safety. Specialist security will also be on site 24/7, with CCTV and strict sign-in procedures for residents.

To be extremely clear, although I understand that there is concern surrounding whether asylum accommodation goes hand in hand with an increase in crime in the local area, I categorically reject that. In September, the chief constable of Essex police confirmed that crime linked to the Wethersfield site is very low and that there is no reason for the public to be concerned about possible criminality in the area associated with the site.

As I hope I have outlined, large sites build public confidence in a fair and humane system, reducing pressure on communities while giving us greater oversight and control at critical points in the asylum decision-making process. Alongside the expansion of large sites, we continue to make use of medium sites and dispersal accommodation. That approach is being implemented in close consultation with local authorities across the UK.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Kohler]

Just in case it is not going to happen, could I press the Minister on changing the tone of the debate to our choice of who runs those asylum centres? That is critical.

[Anna Turley]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. I know he has a long-standing interest in delivery and delivery partners. We have protocols and agreements with those organisations. They have high standards to fulfil and, if they do not do so, we will review their contracts. We keep that under review all the time.

I turn to the new clauses tabled by the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough, and specifically to new clause 30, which

“would require the Secretary of State to consult relevant local authorities and other public bodies considered appropriate, and to prepare and publish a site suitability assessment before a site is used to accommodate 300 or more people as part of the asylum support system.”

Similarly, new clause 64 would require the Home Secretary to

“prepare and publish a Local Impact and Safeguarding Assessment”

before designating a high-capacity asylum accommodation site or materially increasing its capacity.

I thank hon. Members for highlighting the importance of effective engagement on new asylum accommodation sites, safeguarding residents and understanding the impact on local services and communities. The Government agree with that objective. Site selection and mobilisation already involve assessment of safety, safeguarding, service capacity and local impacts, supported by widespread engagement with local authorities, the police, health partners and other relevant bodies. However, the new clauses would impose a rigid statutory process and publication requirement before a site could be approved or expanded. That would create significant overlap with existing planning processes, which would delay delivery and reduce the Government’s ability—