Billions squandered on migrant hotels due to Home Office ‘incompetence’

0:02Hi, I'm Charlie Duffield and welcome back to The Standard Podcast. If you're new here, hit follow and give us a rating. For all the latest news, head to standard.co.uk. Coming up later in the show, find out which A-listers have relocated to Leafy Hampstead. But first, the Home Office has squandered billions of pounds of taxpayers' money on asylum accommodation, according to a damning report by MPs. The Commons Cross Party Home Affairs Committee report published today highlights the previous and current government's failures to manage the mix of hotels, large sites such as the Wethersfield former military base in Essex and shared housing.

0:53It also found the Home Office incapable of getting a grip on the situation and identified failures of leadership at senior level. The MPs said expected costs had tripled to more than£15 billion and not enough had been done to recoup the excess profits. A Home Office spokesperson said the government was furious about the number of illegal migrants in this country and in hotels, and reiterated its pledge to end the use of asylum hotels by 2029. Ministers were told to set out a clear strategy of how to reduce the use of asylum hotels and have a chance to end the current failed, chaotic and expensive system that has wasted money The Green Party has called for the Home Office to be broken up in light of today's report and Tory MP Dame Karen Brady also said the department should be split up with one department managing borders and another managing crime and policing It comes as the Housing Secretary has said that progress on ending the use of hotels for asylum accommodation will be announced within weeks.

2:03Joining us now is Daniel Sohage, a specialist in international refugee law and protection, and the director of human rights organisation Stand for All. Daniel, were you surprised about the findings from this Home Affairs Committee report? We've seen these contracts for hotels increasing in costs for a number of years now. A large portion of that comes down to profits which are being made, which this report flagged. So it's not a surprise. I mean, the scale of this is perhaps a bit surprising of just how mismanaged it has been. But that the costs are going up isn't a surprise, I think, to anybody.

2:40Do you think migrant hotels should ever have been set up as a solution to asylum accommodation? Is there a better way of dealing with the situation? There's a far better way. As a very, very temporary short-term solution, they can be useful. But for the scale that we're talking about, they haven't become temporary solutions. They've become long-term issues, really, rather than solutions. Now, what we've seen previously are there are projects which are called community support schemes. That's where you actually invest in local communities to help everybody. They increase infrastructure, they increase cohesion, and they ensure that people can stay in houses with other people.

3:18There's a number of charities that work on this, for example. Those are far more cost effective than hotels and provide a far better standard of living for people. But we aren't seeing those really explored by this or the previous government. And likewise, we keep hearing about reducing the backlog of people seeking asylum. But the work on that, the previous government actually, there's some suspicion that it was deliberate to build it up. But with this government, we're not seeing that real drive to reduce it, matching what they're saying about reducing it. Because we could be reducing it by saying, OK, we know that people from these countries, such as Afghanistan, have a high acceptance rate.

3:56We can fast track those asylum claims, process the asylum, provide it, and be able to get them out of that system. But we're not seeing that level of work on this yet. And why is that? There's a myriad of reasons. One is just the capacity of the Home Office to be able to do this. Home Office decision-making is renowned for being quite poor, which means that you end up shifting people from the asylum system into the appeal system, but that still leaves them in temporary accommodation. They need to be improving that quality of the system. But there's also a political aspect of it, of trying not to look like they're providing asylum, it comes across at times.

4:34We hear lots and lots of policies about how we can prevent people coming to the UK for asylum. how we can prevent people getting asylum. But we're not really seeing that push on policies to ensure people can get asylum, which is what's needed to reduce the number of people in hotels. Do you think splitting the department in two would help, as has been suggested today? Well, first of all, immigration and asylum are two separate systems, both coming under the Home Office. And you need to split both of those out from the rest of the Home Office, so that immigration as a whole is no longer treated in the same breath as criminality and have that as an almost independent unit focused purely upon the system.

5:16At the moment, the Home Office is wide-reaching, it's got a lot of different areas it covers, and they keep focusing upon immigration as if it's a crime rather than focusing upon a system that actually genuinely works for everybody. Why has the scale of this situation escalated so much? We have actually seen higher levels of people coming to the UK in the past. It's down to the systems we have in place at the moment. It used to be the case that asylum claims had to be processed within about six months maximum. At the moment, we're seeing people trapped in these hotels for one, two, three years plus.

5:50So it's that duration of it is going on. We also see huge issues, and these have come up with the Home Office's own reports, of the quality of decision making. So when that quality is so poor, it means more people then have to go through appeal systems, where they are more likely to get granted asylum because those are somewhat better in their own way. That means that you are leaving people in these accommodations for longer. We did also see, under the previous government, there was an interview with one of the senior members of the government at the time, where it was strongly suggested that this was actually a deliberate measure to slow down processing, increase the backlog, because they were saying, well, it's a pull factor.

6:30It's never been a pull factor for people to be stuck in a hotel or to have their claims dragged out. But this was what was made out during that interview. And that has had repercussions coming forward because it's actually something which takes time to go through. There's no silver bullet to any of this. I said, there is potential that you could solve part of the issue by saying, well, we know that these nationalities have a 90 % or higher chance of their claims being processed. So we run the security checks, we fast track the applications, we provide them with asylum. That takes them out of this temporary accommodation.

7:05You could also, as something which has been suggested by many people, is provide the right to work for asylum seekers. Now that's estimated conservatively between increased taxes and reduced government expenditure to raise about£8 billion per year. That means that people can be self-supporting. It's really important to recognise with all of this that it's actually a minority of asylum seekers who are in these hotels. It's only those who have no ability to support themselves. So if you provide people with the ability to support themselves, you therefore will reduce the reliance upon accommodation like hotels, which helps with the whole system and helps solve this.

7:44Do you think if people did have the right to work and weren't staying in asylum hotels for so long, it would reduce tensions that we've seen emerge in local communities? I think that would definitely help with reducing tensions. There is also meant to be a certain amount of money put into communities to help reduce tensions. That's designed that it boosts everybody. It supports everybody. That funding has been cut systematically over the years. So they need to increase that again. And that's where community support schemes come in. Those are schemes where you invest for the whole community, both those seeking asylum and locals.

8:18It increases infrastructure. It also helps with accommodation and generally reduces divisions within communities. We've seen these schemes played out and they are shown to be far more cost effective and also reduce those tensions so you don't see the protests popping up and things like that. Finally, you said there wasn't a silver bullet, but what action would you like to see the government take? There are three main things that they need to do pretty much straight away, I would say. The first is to reduce the current number of people waiting for their claims. And I said, you do that by saying these nationalities have a 90 % or higher chance of their claim being processed and accepted.

8:59so we're going to fast track those through do the security checks get them asylum get them out of the system so that then reduces part of the number of people within hotels you then provide people with the right to work so that they can you know sustain themselves so they can live their own lives and that saves money as well as increasing revenue through taxation and it means that they are less reliant upon any state support so they aren't needing to use hotels and then finally on that, you start investing in these community support screens so that you're supporting the whole communities. And by providing the right to work, you've just generated about£8 billion per year, as I said.

9:37Instead of wasting money on publicity stunts and performative policies, you put that into communities so it benefits everybody. It's really crucial to recognize people don't choose to go into hotels. Now, we see a lot of people in the hotels and forget the whole, oh, they're five-star and stuff. Whatever their rating may have been previously, the contractors for this cram as many people in quite often. And those then become very substandard conditions. They aren't allowed things in many of these hotels, like kettles even, in their rooms. So these are very poor conditions for people. So no one is choosing to be in there.

10:13But by those three measures, you can start to reduce the number of people who are in hotels. And that helps everybody. Let's go to a break. Coming up in part two, the latest celebs to have left America during Trump's term in office to set up life in the capital. We'll see you back here in just a moment. Welcome back. Hampstead has two new celebrity residents as Hollywood couple Ryan Gosling and Eva Mendes have relocated to North London. The pair met on the set of the 2012 film The Place Beyond the Pines and married in 2022. They have two daughters, 11-year-old Esmeralda and 9-year-old Amada. And Gosling, the three-time Academy Award nominee and Hollywood's favourite romantic lead, has apparently already been spotted at the school gates, reportedly leaving mother's swooning.

11:12To find out more, I spoke to The Standards Entertainment editor Lisa McLaughlin. Lisa, do we know what has prompted this move from Gosling? Gosling is in London filming the upcoming Star Wars movie Starfighter. It's also believed that he's the latest celeb to make the Donald Dash, as they say, in order to escape the political situation in the States. And who might their neighbours be? Well, he joins a long list of star-studded names that are known for living in the area. We've got Emma Thompson, we've got Ricky Gervais, Jude Law, and probably the most famous of them all, Harry Styles. So what has the reaction been so far to this news?

11:48Obviously Gosling's arrival to Hampstead has turned the heads of locals, but particularly parents that he's joined at the school gates. So I think we've seen that one local resident has said, yes, he's here and so delightful chatting to everyone at the school gates, such a lovely man and everyone can't stop talking about how good looking he is. The mums are practically drooling over him and I think that's a sentiment that many of us would probably have if we saw him at skill gates. Equally he surprised others by being seen in West Hampstead. He opened up a cafe door for a patron. Equally he was seen in a restaurant, a local Persian restaurant as well in Hampstead, much to many people's delight.

12:24So his arrival is definitely putting a smile on people's faces. Do you think celebs moving over here is becoming more common? Yeah so there's You know, Ron Gosling and Eva Mendes are two celebs in a growing trend that are moving over here. So we've seen other celebs like Ellen DeGeneres, who now lives in the Cotswolds with her wife Portia de Rossi. Also Gosling's Barbie co-star America Frere also has reportedly relocated to the southwest London. On top of this, there's also conversations that potentially Tom Cruise is looking at moving to the Cotswolds, as well as Beyonce and Jay-Z, who have long been reported to be buying land in the Cotswolds, near to where Ellen DeGeneres is based, kind of just close to where Jeremy Clarkson's farm and also his pub, The Farmist Dog, is based.

13:07So they're one of many celebrities who've moved to the UK since Trump has taken office. So what's the appeal of the UK then? Political stability, you know. Ultimately, I think that, you know, most of these people, they have reiterated time and time again And that they don't like what the political landscape is like in the States at the moment under Trump's rule. So I hate to use the word rule, but that's, I suppose, how it's feeling, you know. So I think the appeal is, one, a quieter life over here in the UK, a safer space as well for their kids going to school, as we've seen throughout the years about gun violence in schools and in open spaces.

13:43And equally, I saw something or not saw something, but I read a piece in Variety that has also said that London is now becoming the hub for a lot of the voters for awards season. So I think that's also attractive. And also for any of the actors that are out there, a lot of the film studios are now based just outside London. We've got Levinson, we've got Netflix's new studio, amongst others that are here. So I suppose they're closer to work. And remind me why so many celebs are moving to the Cotswolds as well. First and foremost, the Cotswolds is outstandingly a beautiful place, I suppose. It has the allure of stone-built villages and houses and pebbled pavements that are kind of straight out of a film.

14:25Equally, it gives celebs a lot of privacy and a lot of space. We've seen the likes of Ellen DeGeneres and Hawaii. Portia de Rossi moved there. They moved initially due to Donald Trump taking office in the White House. But they have since moving here have bought two places. So they've sold their first and they've now gone on to a second one with more land. But they're not the only ones that are out this way. We've also seen Kate Winslet and Elizabeth Hurley, Hugh Grant, Jeremy Clarkson, probably those famous Cotswold. Olean of them all, Kate Moss and J.K. Rowling are other famous celebs like UK-based celebs that are already calling the Cotswolds home.

14:58And also, let's not forget, Victoria and David Beckham.

15:06And that's The Standard. For all the latest news, head to standard.co.uk. If you'd like to get in touch, please do drop us a line at podcasts at standard.co.uk. We'll be back here tomorrow at 5pm. We'll see you then.