Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether he provided existing asylum dispersal local authorities with details of the proposed contracts for asylum accommodation beyond the Statement of Requirements in advance of those contracts being signed and announced in January 2019.

The Home Office openly shared ‘schedule 2’, the statement of requirements, and ‘schedule 23’, procurement consultation, of the accommodation and sup-port and AIRE contracts, which contains the information most pertinent to Local Authorities.

Prior to both contract award and signature we invited Regional Strategic Mi-gration Partnerships to engage with Local Authorities to identify those sched-ules within the contract set of most interest to them.

As part of the procurement process it is essential that the contracting authori-ty adheres to the procurement regulation and protect the integrity of the pro-cess. For this reason, additional documents were not openly shared with stakeholders.

We will continue to engage with Local Authorities through the Regional Stra-tegic Migration Partnerships to listen to and act in response to concerns raised, ensuring swift and appropriate action.