Asylum Seekers: Support and Accommodation

Seamus Logan Excerpts

Monday 20th October 2025 Westminster Hall

[Seamus Logan (Aberdeenshire North and Moray East) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I acknowledge the petitioners and their call for

“a cessation of financial and other support”

but I rise to challenge the petition. I thank the hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan) for his very learned contribution to opening the debate.

I will begin by responding to people who believe asylum seekers are a problem in our local communities. Those people’s real enemy does not arrive on these shores in a small boat, wearing a lifejacket. Their real enemy arrives in a private jet, or in a big plane, wearing designer clothes and expensive jewellery. Some of the real enemies of the people sit on the Benches of this place and the other place. They appear on radio and TV, selling falsehoods like snake oil salesmen.

The SNP Government in Scotland have been clear: Labour must end the hostile environment for asylum seekers and deliver an effective and humane asylum system that meets the UK’s international legal obligations. That means putting an end, as soon as possible, to accommodating asylum seekers in hotels. Politicians also need to end the ridiculous disinformation around those locations that suggests they are some form of luxury accommodation. As anyone who has visited such a facility knows—the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp) has visited one, so he will know—they are nothing of the sort.

Labour’s proposals to consider using large industrial sites and military locations are equally concerning. These people have fled war, persecution, famine, drought and terrorism. Military bases are not acceptable, nor is a lack of support services. That lack will exacerbate their problems, which often include mental health problems.

[Chris Murray]

How does the hon. Gentleman reconcile his point about the UK Government with the fact that, under the Homes for Ukraine scheme, the Scottish Government’s policy was to house Ukrainian refugees in hotels across Scotland, and on cruise ships?

[Seamus Logan]

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention, but what he is describing is not quite the same thing.

Many asylum seekers have valuable skills and are keen to contribute to society and the economy; it is Home Office dogma inherited from the Tories and driven by Reform UK that prevents them from doing so. The term “illegal migrant” is divisive, dehumanising and inaccurate. People are not illegal. The UK is a signatory to the 1951 UN refugee convention and the supporting 1967 protocol, meaning that it has international legal obligations to recognise refugees in the UK, to protect them and to meet minimum treatment standards. Article 31 of the convention gives refugees the right not to be punished for irregular entry into the territory of a contracting state. The UK is an island and it does not allow people to apply for asylum from overseas. Similarly, there is no visa allowing people to enter the UK to make an asylum claim.

People of course have the right to peaceful protest in a democracy, but the protests outside hotels and the accompanying rhetoric have often gone far beyond what is acceptable. Those protests are creating a sense of real fear and alarm for people who have been through so much. Refugees must not be scapegoated. They should be treated as decent human beings and their potential to be full members of our communities should be recognised.

Successive UK Governments’ mismanagement of the asylum system is creating serious pressure for local authorities, especially Glasgow city council. The Scottish Government are making more than £115 million available in Glasgow to support the delivery of more social and affordable homes, but the Home Office must also urgently provide more financial assistance to enable local authorities to provide safety and sanctuary for people seeking asylum.

UK Ministers must also engage with the Scottish Government, who have called repeatedly on the Home Office to meet them and Glasgow city council, but to no avail. In April, the Scottish Refugee Council invited Scotland’s Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice to attend a roundtable meeting with the council and the UK Government. Disappointingly, UK Government Ministers chose not to attend.

Asylum seekers are not coming over here, taking all our jobs and our houses, living high on the hog on benefits, and clogging up our GP surgeries and schools. Those are the lies peddled by some politicians and wannabe leaders to distract us from the real issues that should concern people: the rising cost of living, sky-high energy bills, and wages stagnating while the rich grow richer at the expense of the working men and women of this country. They are distracting us—“Look over here. Get angry about this!”—instead of focusing on the real issues. Scotland and its people want to take a different path—a path that echoes the best traditions of our ancient Celtic people, who prided themselves on providing hospitality and a welcome to the stranger.

The following facts might sit uncomfortably with the people in my constituency who signed this petition, but facts they are. Our birth rate is falling. Our workforce size is decreasing—declining. Our older people are living longer and growing in number. Who will care for them, treat them, feed them and pay taxes to run their public services? We need migrants to fill our labour shortages. Our health services need their skills. Our social care teams need their help. Our fishers and fish processors need them urgently. Our farmers need them. Our hospitality and tourism industries need their help. Therefore, rather than closing our borders to all, let us find safe and legal routes for the asylum seeker. Let us make migration routes clearer and easier to understand, not harder.

To conclude, I have four requests of the Minister and this Government. I ask them first, to end the use of hotels; secondly, to provide safe and supportive accommodation; thirdly, to grant asylum seekers and their dependants the right to work; and finally, to reframe messaging on migration in a more positive and humane way.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Pochin]

No, I am going to continue. We have to stop the incentives to come to this country. We need to protect the public, particularly women and girls, from these sexually active young men currently free to roam our streets.

[Seamus Logan]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Sarah Pochin]

No, I am nearly finished. We need to prioritise our own citizens and stop this betrayal of our culture and our country. To finish, I would like to make this observation. The Home Office has just put out a contract to tender for asylum support and accommodation services to run from 2029 to 2036, so clearly, the Government have no plans to stop these hotels and are, in fact, facilitating them. The Minister can shake his head, but it is there online.