Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what estimate she has made of how many hotels will be required as temporary accommodation for people seeking asylum in Northern Ireland by the end of 2025.

This Government inherited an asylum system under exceptional strain. We took immediate action to resolve that chaos by restarting asylum processing, establishing the new Border Security Command to tackle the people-smuggling gangs, cracking down on illegal working across the country, and increasing the return and removal of people with no right to be here.

Since the General Election, there has been a net increase of six hotels in use across the UK; however, ten are scheduled for closure by the end of March 2025. It remains our absolute commitment to end the use of hotels over time, as part of our reduction in overall asylum accommodation costs. In the interim, we are also continuing to increase our operational activity against smuggling gangs and illegal working, and we have increased returns to their highest level since 2018, with 16,400 people removed in the first six months this government was in office.

Data on the number of supported asylum seekers in accommodation, including hotels, and by local authority can be found within the Asy_D11 tab for our most recent statistics release: Immigration system statistics data tables - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)(opens in a new tab).

In terms of the accommodation of asylum seekers in Northern Ireland, it remains the case that only those claiming asylum in Northern Ireland are accommodated there.