Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department has taken to increase the number of voluntary deals with local authorities to widen the dispersal of asylum seekers.

Since 2015, the Home Office has been working closely with accommodation providers and local authorities across the UK to increase the number of areas that participate in the asylum seeker dispersal scheme; this activity has already increased the number of dispersal areas by a third and continues to encourage those local authorities that aren’t participating to do so.