Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether it is her Department's policy that internationally recruited nurses should not stay in the same hotels as refugees.

Successive years in which record numbers of people have crossed the Channel in small boats has placed our asylum infrastructure under immense strain. In order to meet our statutory obligations to accommodate asylum seekers who would otherwise be destitute, we have been forced to temporarily house asylum seekers in hotels. The use of hotels is a short-term solution, and we are working hard with Local Authorities and our accommodation providers to find more appropriate accommodation.

When standing up hotels for initial accommodation we ensure that our service providers have sole use of the site and will not mix with paying guests or other cohorts requiring support.

There are occasionally exceptional circumstances when we need to book short term emergency accommodation on a night-by-night basis, where there may be other paying guests or cohorts at those sites; however only used as a last resort.