Keir Starmer has insisted that the Home Office will not be buying up hotels and changing their use to “accommodation centres” in a bid to ensure he keeps his pledge to end the use of asylum hotels by 2029.
Speaking to journalists accompanying him to the G7 in Canada, Sir Keir insisted that there would be no attempt to “massage the figures” on the pledge to stop using taxpayer-funded hotels to house asylum seekers.
The issue was raised after the promise to stop paying for hotels was made in the spending review by chancellor Rachel Reeves.
It comes as the prime minister held talks with his Italian counterpart Giorgia Meloni to discuss imposing sanctions on people smugglers.
Despite increasing numbers of asylum seekers making the dangerous journey across the Channel in small boats, the move to ban migrant hotels is expected to save at least £1bn, according to Treasury estimates.
Sir Keir said: “On the question of hotels, what I want to do is to reduce the number of hotels and get rid of the use of hotels.
“I’m absolutely clear why we’re in this problem – it’s because the last government didn’t process the claims. So it left people in limbo where they couldn’t be removed because they hadn’t been processed, so they couldn’t leave the country or be removed from the country. There were tens of thousands of people in a pool that was ever-expanding.
“That’s not good – certainly not good for the taxpayer – and I intend to change that. And that’s why we’re working so hard on processing the claims as quickly as we can. Because when you process the claims you can then remove people who shouldn’t be here hence the 30,000 that have been removed which is the highest number for the best part of a decade now. That’s the way to drive this down.”
He went on: “We are determined to get those hotels shut, and properly shut, and not massaging the figures. I’m not interested in that. Shutting the hotels is what I’m absolutely focused on.”
The prime minister also revealed that he planned an unofficial mini-summit at the G7 with French president Emmanuel Macron, German chancellor Friedrich Mertz and Ms Meloni over the continued issue of illegal migration across Europe.
A readout from his Sunday evening meeting with Ms Meloni noted: “They had a lengthy discussion on migration, confirming that they would continue working together on innovative solutions to break the criminal model of irregular migration.
“The Prime Minister raised the UK’s world-leading work on people smuggling sanctions, adding that he looked forward to working with other European countries on this approach.”
On the flight over he insisted that he was not frustrated with the French over their failure to prevent thousands of migrants from getting into small boats to cross the Channel.
This comes despite anger expressed on the issue by defence secretary John Healey over French inaction despite the UK paying £400m to France to help tackle the problem.
Sir Keir said: “One of the things we’ve worked hard at is improving the relations with the French in relation to the work we both need to do to stop these boat crossings, which I’m determined we will absolutely bear down on. Nobody should be making that journey.
“As a result of that we are seeing a much greater cooperation in northern France – I want to see more cooperation in northern France, and it’s an issue that I have raised and will raise again with President Macron. We have good relations between the Home Secretary and the Interior Minister now that we’re working on jointly.
“It’s one of the issues I’ll be discussing – not just with Macron, actually, but discussing it with Georgia Meloni, Freidrich Merz, and others.”
