Where are asylum seekers supposed to live now?

0:28Overwhelmed? this is a global player original podcast we're looking very closely at the judgment clearly we are in the process of identifying contingency options for what's going to happen to those people who are currently accommodated in that hotel in epping what seems the likeliest contingency option well with respect that the legal judgment was only handed down yesterday after it's an hmo isn't it if it's not a hotel it's a it's a flat somewhere or a or a bedsit well as i say we're looking at contingency options for how those people can be appropriately accommodated. But the bigger picture issue is driving down the use of hotels altogether.

1:07We don't think that that is an appropriate solution. And that is Dan Jarvis, the Home Office Minister, struggling to explain what is going to happen to the people who were housed in the Epping Hotel, the Bell, who must now be rehoused. The worry for the government, the nightmare scenario for the government, is that this won't only be contained to Epping, but rather this legal judgment will be picked up and applied to hotel after hotel in local authority after local authority, which leaves a central question that Jarvis was unable to answer. Where are all the asylum seekers going to go? Welcome to the News Agents.

1:56the news agents it's john it's lewis and you'd have to say that the judgment that came from the high court yesterday whilst it may have been anticipated was probably the last thing the government needed right now with its asylum policy with a record number of people arriving in this country on small boats the policy of putting these people in hotels have grown more and more unpopular with local residents they've become more and more of a flashpoint for groups on the far right and now what the hell as you said lewis are you going to do with those people not just at the bell but anywhere else where there is now a problem this is a nightmare scenario really for Yvette Cooper for the for the home office are you say um maybe it was expected John I think my understanding is it wasn't expected partly because there have been similar attempts not only by this particular district council in Epping but other local authorities around the country to do something like this before that the background to this is what they've managed to do these hotels have been around for a long time we should say they were not a labour idea they were in place under the conservative government in fact the numbers were higher actually under the Conservative government at one point.

3:12Richard Hunak did start to drive them down. But these have been used as really a kind of matter of last resort for governments. The fact of the matter is, and we can get into a debate about why people are coming or what to do with them, but while they're here being processed, their applications for asylum being processed, they've got to go somewhere. Otherwise, they'll be homeless. And, you know, there are countries that do that. It happens in Northern France, where we've both been, I think, over the years, reported from there. The people in northern France hate it understandably because you see you know migrants asylum seekers wandering along the streets kids on the streets people with all their possessions in trolleys living in the woods it's filthy it's unsanitary it's horrible so you've got to do something with them and we know we've got very little in the way of social housing accommodation and so governments have ended up using asylum hotels which themselves have become very controversial the government I think thought that this would easily go through because this has been challenged before what's happened is is that they've managed to use an obscure bit of planning legislation basically getting on a planning technicality basically saying that this hotel has had a change of use on the planning law i.e this was supposed to be a hotel for people visiting for a night or two or whatever now people are basically living there therefore it's unlawful and it needs to be remedied and that's what the judge has said yes the planning law states that the hotel can be used for people who don't stay more than 30 nights and of course these people are semi-permanent whilst the backlog is got through of asylum applications and so under planning law it is pretty clear why epping council was able to mount the legal challenge i do think it's kind of telling and interesting the home office argument against which is not based on law it's kind of the give us a break argument which is You know, there was a last minute attempt by the Home Office to get the case dismissed.

5:04And Edward Brown, KC for the government, said any injunction could lead to other councils making similar applications. That would aggravate the pressures on the asylum estate. Well, hang on. That's not the law. That's just a PR appeal. And the idea that all the Home Office have got is an appeal to say, oh, God, look, this is going to make matters worse for us. the judge who's hearing this has to implement the law as it currently stands and the law as it currently stands is not about what is good for the government or what is bad for the government and now the government therefore have got a well they've got several decisions to make i mean the ministers have been saying this morning that they've just received the judgment they're going to consider it in terms of what it means it could be overturned they could appeal it and that might happen but if they choose not to or it is not overturned and we see this morning that this is taken up by other councils, which looks like all but guaranteed, because we've seen that Richard Tice, the deputy leader of reform, of course, saying that local authorities, they now control 10 local authorities, that all of their local authorities will seek to mimic and replicate the judgment, take the government to court to get asylum hotels shut down in their area.

6:16Well, you know, if this were to be replicated, it becomes nightmarish, because the question is, go back to that first question, what does the government do with them? This is the problem. I think this is my problem with when you talk to people about this and, you know, particularly kind of people who are against these hotels, you say, well, where are they going to go? No one wants these hotels. No one wants them. Labour doesn't want them. Labour have pledged to close them by 2029 at the end of the parliament. The Conservatives didn't want them. They have become a centre of deep resentment and political action in different places.

6:43And I can completely understand why if you suddenly have a hotel in your community, which is suddenly full of people you don't know who maybe don't speak English, who sometimes, yeah, maybe commit crime. Not all, obviously, but that can happen. I can totally understand why you might be really pissed off. You might be really worried. You might be scared and you hear things that people say about them and so on. But the question remains, where are they going to go? If you listen to people like Farage or Thais, they'll just come back with a completely reductive. We'll just send them back. Send them back.

7:11But you can't send them back. A, there's a legal duty to process them. They may be genuine asylum seekers to whom then Britain has a legal obligation. That's number one. Number two, even if they're not, haven't got a case for asylum, let's just say, for example, you know, the evidence is back up, or maybe we think actually they're an economic migrant. OK, fine. But then what do we do if they're from Yemen or they're from Afghanistan or they're from South Sudan? We send them back there. We don't have returns agreements with those countries. I've said it before on the show. What are we supposed to do?

7:40Just parachute them in? we can't there aren't charter flights to carpool going from lute and apple not presently and therefore what do you do even leaving that question to one side you still have to put them somewhere while they're being processed so now if asylum hotels aren't the answer the only other answers are social housing of which there is precious little supply things called hmos houses of multiple occupation so like bed sits basically big blocks and whatever where you basically just sort of shove people in. Big problem with those that, you know, they can be difficult or unsanitary, whatever it happens to be.

8:14Or the private rented sector. So basically the answer is, is they'll be in the community, separate around. Now people don't want that either. So what do you do? I don't know what you do in this situation, but the problem is with the debate in this country about this is that it presupposes there are no trade-offs, that there's just an easy answer. But there isn't an easy answer. Both Tory and Labour governments have struggled to know what to do with this because it is very, very difficult. Just going back to the Dan Jarvis clip that we played at the top there. Do you think he doesn't know or doesn't want to say about what the answer is?

8:45Because I think it's really interesting because, you know, maybe the problem that the government thinks they will have is if it announces we're going to do something, you know, that sparks another lot of preemptive protests before you do it. because we've seen the power of the protests outside the Bell Hotel in Epping, which has caused a real ding-dong. That was the kind of pun that I should have probably not tried to get in. But you can see that, you know, the power of protest emboldens the council to take the action to go to the courts because it's got a problem and the courts have upheld it.

9:23Yeah, we should say, I mean, actually, it is a minority of asylum seekers who are in hotels. So there's about 32 ,000 or so at the moment in hotels. That's about 30 % of the total. There's about 71 ,000 who are in by far the biggest share. About 67 % are in other types of accommodation. So that is shared houses, HMOs, flats and so on. But you can completely imagine if there is a shortage of those things and they are also used for other reasons people might need to be in temporary accommodation, whether they're thrown out or evicted or whatever it happens to be. So there's already pressure on those from other sources.

9:55But you can completely imagine, let's say an HMO, a sort of large bedsit or whatever. As soon as some of these groups get wind that some of these people are in those, then they'll attack those as well. And they'll start to tell other people that, oh, there's that block or whatever it happens to be or that set of flats. That's full of asylum seekers. So just transposing people from asylum hotels to other forms of accommodation doesn't necessarily answer the question. To answer your question, John, I think it's probably a combination of those things for Jarvis, right? Like on the one hand, he kind of does know what the answer is, but he doesn't want to say because people won't like it.

10:26But then the other hand, there's actually not enough of those things, those shared accommodations or whatever, to actually put all of the people who are in asylum hotels. So it's it's a nightmare for the home office. Yeah. Paul Brand, ITV correspondent and sometimes heard here. Government source tells me the reason why Dan Jarvis won't set out the alternative to asylum hotels is because of security concerns. they claim far right could use locations as a recruitment tool but not sure that that position can hold people want to know where asylum seekers will be again it all feeds into this idea of it being an absolute bloody nightmare i tell you one thing that was interested me i mean obviously we have made extensive phone calls this morning and rung around some of these uh reform councils and you were talking about richard tyce talking about you know looking at all the legal options and anywhere where they control a council.

11:19Now, reform are normally pretty good at coming forward and wanting to put their case. We couldn't get anybody on who would agree to do an interview this morning. All we managed was Mark Arnold, the leader of West Northamptonshire Council, who sent us a video statement. We've always been clear with the government and the public that the current use of the hotels in West Northamptonshire have never been suitable locations for asylum accommodation and placed an unreasonable and unsustainable strain on our already stretched local services. We know these hotels cause concern for our communities, and I've raised these issues with the Home Secretary, and I've written to the Deputy Prime Minister about the wider use of asylum accommodation within our community.

12:02We're currently considering the implications of the judgment in Epping yesterday to understand similarities and differences, and we're actively looking at the options now available to us here in West Northamptonshire. As such, I can't comment further at this time, but I will issue a further statement in due course. In the meantime, we'll continue to work with partners in the police and in our communities to make sure that residents' concerns are heard and addressed. So how are his captors doing, by the way? It looks like a hostage video. Is everything all right in West Northamptonshire? Well, look, first of all, kudos to him for giving us an answer.

12:36Did we do it at gunpoint? I know, but it did look rather like he kind of dare not stray one inch in either direction and was reading from a statement. I kind of thought actually it showed. I mean, it was, you know, he came back to us and thank you for doing so. But it did look like a hostage video and it did look like he was rather fearful to say anything that could be taken out of context there. Yeah, indeed. Well, I mean, look, I think they're afraid. Look, I think they're afraid. Ultimately, reform don't have the answers either. No one has the answers. This is the truth is about this whole thing.

13:06We've talked about this on this show many times. This is one of the most complicated bits of public policy that I think exists in Britain today. It's also the most politically contentious one and the most politically noxious one. It's really emotive. It's really difficult. And that's all fine. And that's OK. It has been made worse by politician after politician after politician pretending there's a simple solution. Stop the boats. Smash the gangs. Farage, send them back. Each one of those things, three words, whatever it is, each one of them wrong. Each one of them, they know it's wrong. And this is the problem, is that then what?

13:39That fuels the disillusionment, fuels the disillusionment that exists, because you get politician after politician coming along saying, I know how to handle this, and there's an easy way of dealing with it. And guess what? It doesn't happen. And the fact of the matter is, is that with regards to the small boats issue, yes, it is a profound problem in our politics. I've come around to the view, actually, I used to have the view that it was kind of a blown up problem out of proportion to what it was. And indeed, the numbers are relatively trifling, right? It's 30 ,000, 40 ,000 a year in an overall picture of where migration is 500 ,000, 600 ,000, 700 ,000.

14:17But there's no doubt that it has metastasized in our politics. As a result of the impression, the TV pictures, it gives an impression of the lack of control, of the state completely losing any grip on its own borders and a sense of lawlessness. And it is inhabiting people's everyday concern. And it is fueling the far right. Therefore, I've come around to the view that actually quite drastic measures need to be taken to stop it. Not because I think the problem is that profound, but because the problem of political perception is profound. And whether actually that does involve, for example, a reworking of the ECHR, I don't mean like Robert Jenrick believes it, by the way, which is a unilateral withdrawal from it.

14:59I don't think that's possible or desirable. You couldn't do it as part of our Good Friday Treaty obligations for a start. But there are other countries in Europe. There are lots of other countries who have this same problem. This is why it is not just a British problem. We've got the control. France has got a problem. Italy's got a problem. Spain's got a problem. Greece has got a problem. Turkey's got a problem. You name it, Germany. There is a widespread feeling within Europe because other, you know, mainstream democratic parties are struggling with this as well. There is clearly a feeling in Europe that the current policy legal architecture we've got, which was designed after the Second World War in a very different era, might need to be reappraised.

15:35And I think that in the era and the world of global insecurity that we are in, that would not be a bad idea. There has got to be an alternative way of reassessing this problem, which is less simplistic than just smashing the gangs, less simplistic than just saying stopping the boats, less simplistic than just saying send them back, that will take time, but I think could be done. But I do think that mainstream politicians do have to start to think quite drastically. Maybe that would also include offshore processing. I don't mean a Rwanda type deal where you just send people there in perpetuity, but some form of offshore processing where at least while they're being processed, that's where they are.

16:11So I think all options need to be on the table because this is becoming such a profound political problem. I think I agree with more or less everything you've just said, which is disturbing and worrying for me. I think there is the urgency of now. I just think that there is no time to waste. And I I think that the more the public hears politicians of Conservative or Labour colours with glib phrases that look good on a podium but are actually undeliverable. I think that it just fosters the cynicism that allows the reformed politicians and even maybe people on the far, far right to flourish. to it's a recruiting sergeant where people think you know what I am so pissed off with the conventional mainstream Labour politician who tells me we're going to smash the glangs or the Conservative politician who tells me we're going to stop the boats and neither of which are able to achieve either then I think you are in the territory that is so fertile for these groups that I don't believe have got any easy answers either.

17:21But I think that I'm 100 % with you. This is an absolutely serious problem. And I think that for years and years, politicians, I mean, of all stripes, have lied about the scale of the problem. You know, David Cameron, we're going to get migration down to the tens of thousands, all the rest of it. It's been going on for a quarter of a century now that people have been queuing up in Calais, trying to find ways to come across. And now it has reached the levels where I think that the public have it in their heads that conventional politics has utterly failed them. Yeah, I think that's right. And so I think that's why conventional politics has to go to places that it might not ordinarily have gone.

18:03And I think that that is an increasing conclusion that Labour politicians are coming to as well. In a moment, we'll be back with a much sunnier subject for the government, the economy. Oh no, it's not that sunny.

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19:00Since life moves so fast, the right tools can help you feel more confident. Download the Klarna app today or visit Klarna.com to learn more. California resident loans made or arranged pursuant to a California finance law license and MLS number 1353190. Clown a balanced account required to be eligible for cashback points. Limitations, terms and conditions apply. This is The News Agents. So from one intractable problem for the government to another, this on the economy, yet more bad news for Rachel Reeves today. It keeps getting worse and worse for the chancellor. Some of it in her control, some of it not within her control.

19:40This is about inflation. So two big, really negative things over the last 24 hours. First one is about inflation. Inflation rose again in July to a higher than expected 3.8 percent, so nearly 4 percent, largely being driven by exactly the things you don't want it to be driven by, which is food prices, travel costs. that's basically making the markets think that there won't be another interest rate cut this year or at least it raises the likelihood that that won't happen actually food prices are rising by substantially more than four percent about five percent a year or so which is obviously bad news for everybody else the other thing is government borrowing costs continue to climb as well and so this is gilt prices cost of government bonds government borrowing costs on monday pushed higher again nearly reaching their highest rate for 27 years 30 year government borrowing costs.

20:28And again, the scary thing about that is, it's not entirely clear why. There is a general increase in government borrowing costs for other G7 countries. Britain's is a bit faster. It seems to just, it's not being obviously triggered by a trust style mini budget or anything like that. It seems to be a slow realisation by the markets or a slow pricing in of the markets of the prospect of continued sluggish growth, a lack of confidence by the markets in the British economy over the the short to medium term as more and more i know the ability to finance our debts as more and more of these bad economic indicators come out i've seen liz truss as you might expect on x talking she's normally so quiet i know i know talking about why is no one screaming about the cost of borrowing now i mean yeah i know but she's but she's making the point that it you know it's higher now than it was when she was prime minister and caused the absolute crisis in the markets now it's not a crisis yet but you can see these black clouds looming as rachel reeves sort of tries to navigate a path towards a budget and it's also interesting some of the ideas that are coming out now about how she's going to deal with this fiscal black hole because we know she still needs to raise huge sums of money the government backed down at the time of the summer recess on its welfare reform packages, which created another black hole.

21:53We now know that inflation is up, the cost of borrowing is not going to fall. And so there are all these factors. And if the cost of government borrowing goes up, that means you've got to find more money to fund it. And so, you know, some people talk about a£50 billion black hole that needs to be plugged. And of course, we know that the Labour government back in the, you know, last year during the election campaign said it wouldn't raise income tax said it wouldn't raise national insurance contributions for employees so what the hell do they do and now they're looking at all sorts of kind of esoteric property taxes that might be a way of raising large sums of money politically toxic and of course made worse by their own retreats over welfare reform over winter fuel payments and various other bits and pieces as well which all add up so the prospect i mean sometimes obviously you know when we're talking about billions and billions of pounds it's sort of hard to kind of get your head around but having to make in-year or year-to-year adjustments of, even if it's at the lower end, of 20 billion.

22:55I mean, even for the government, that's serious money. It's serious money that you've got to try and find, particularly, as you say, John, when you have ruled out the main levers that you have to try and actually raise extra revenue. There's only three options for her, right? Fundamentally, for any chancellor, there's only three options when you're plugging a shortfall. You can raise taxes, you can cut spending. She just had the departmental spending review, So she'd have to reopen that, which would look ridiculous and actually probably create a confidence problem. Or you can borrow more money.

23:25And we can see that in each one of those things, her room for manoeuvre is so, so small, either because she put herself there on taxes and on departmental spending or because of external circumstances as a result of her lack of ability to borrow. So when I think of Rachel Reeves at the moment, I sort of think of a woman in a room where the walls are just closing in bit by bit. The sort of room that she has to move in any particular direction is just less and less. So she's trying to find a sort of way out of the room and it's harder and harder to do. So you just say some of the unorthodox ways that she's thinking about raising extra money, all the papers full of suggestion that maybe should impose what would really be very radical things in the history of British politics.

24:12So, for example, imposing capital gains taxation on the sale of your primary residence, which is a relatively rare thing to do without some exceptions anywhere in the world. And in Britain, this sort of great property owning democracy would be really, really controversial. The Treasury Minister, Torsten Bell, was asked about some of these more unorthodox ideas on Sky News yesterday. Well, I'm a newish MP, but I'm not an idiot. And you know that tax decisions are made by the Chancellor. I'm not going to start speculating on individual taxes because then you'll ask me another three questions about other taxes.

24:43So the answer is that taxes are matters for the budgets and matters for Chancers. What I can say is this government is going to get things being built again. I get that you're not the Chancellor, but you're a Treasury Minister. Well, that's another reason why I'm not going to start speculating individual taxes. Look, you get the same answer that you ask any minister all the time. And at some point, there'll be a learning curve and we won't just go through a rehearsing each individual question. What I'm saying to you is this is a government that is going to get houses built. Fine. But it's a rather interesting, the obtuse response to a reasonable question about the pros and cons of types of taxes rather than specifics.

25:17That's what we call going on the offensive. Yeah. When you've got little ground for being on the offensive, as it seems right now. And we should say, of course, quite a bit of the macroeconomic instability she's facing is beyond her control, right? I mean, she can't control, for example, what Trump has done on tariffs. That's destabilised the global economy. It's slowed growth everywhere, without doubt. There's geopolitical instability, which is continuing, again, completely beyond her control. There's sluggish growth in other countries, including the European Union, beyond her control. And she inherited the way the Tories go on about it, honestly, completely shamelessly, as if the economy was going gangbusters.

25:51And that there was no debt. For God's sake, most of the debt that we have was accumulated under the previous 14 years. So, you know, lousy inheritance, the rest of it. But there are some things it's going to be harder for her politically in October, on October for the budget, to be able to do what she did last year, which is just basically blame the Tories for everything. And then I think there are two sort of cardinal things that you can say that she's done, which have worsened the overall situation. One is a relatively specific thing. The increase on national insurance for employers. Now, you might say that was the only option she had.

26:24OK, fine. But there's no doubt that it has slowed employment growth. And it even has had a part, I think it's clear, in the inflation figures, for example, we've seen today, because one of the reasons that food prices are rising faster here than in, say, other European countries is it seems that the supermarkets are passing on that national insurance rights in the form of their prices, which obviously we're all paying in the shop. So that's one. The second one is, and you've already said it, John, it goes back to that political decision to say, which they really probably didn't need to say, that they would not under any circumstances ever increase national insurance, income tax or that.

27:01Because the net effect of that, I mean, they would have won the election anyway for a start. Maybe it would have been a bit less, but they would have won the election anyway. The net effect of that has been that basically we're seeing this pattern that we had last year repeated, which is the economy isn't doing well. So everyone is wondering. We've got these long run in times to a fiscal event, to a budget. And the net result of that is that because the markets know and we all know in the media, we all know that she can't use those levers, those big tax raising levers. There's all this endless speculation about these other things that they might do or might not do, which destabilises the political scene.

27:39It spooks the markets and you end up having the conversation dominated exactly as we just saw in that clip about potential unusual things that the Treasury might do to try and raise some revenue, which is bad for them politically. It's also bad for them economically as well. You used the metaphor a moment ago about you kind of imagine Rachel Reeves as this person standing in a room where the walls are contracting and the floor is raising and the ceiling is coming down and she's squashed in what she can do. I wonder whether it's also made worse by the person next door to that room, Keir Starmer, has not entirely backed her.

28:14I mean, he's backed her in terms of political support. But, you know, he was the one who made the decision that we're going to abandon the welfare reform proposal. Now, maybe he had no choice, but it was also a cack-handed political operation in Downing Street that hadn't prepared properly for getting the support of backbenchers for it. And it left Rachel Reeves with another headache. And, you know, and even now, if she comes up with an idea, say, on property taxes and my God, you know, look at the history of prime ministers who've tried to introduce major changes to the way property is taxed.