Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to the oral answer of the The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department of 13 July 2020 on Covid-19: Support for Asylum Seekers, Official Report, column 678, what the evidential basis was for her Department's conclusion that 109 people who might have been moved from the temporary serviced accommodation into the hotels were not moved as a consequence of vulnerability assessments; and what the criteria of those vulnerability assessments was.

Prior to the moves into hotels Mears considered individuals’ health records and a meeting took place with each service user.

Based on this, 102 (not 109 as stated in the question) service users were moved to alternative Mears accommodation, rather than hotels. All other service users were moved to hotels, where further health and welfare assessments were carried out, and some service users were subsequently moved to alternative dispersed accommodation.