Migrants could be housed in hotels for up to three more years due to the asylum backlog, The Independent reports.
Following Labour’s general election victory, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper is said to have realised that the backlog of asylum seekers would take longer to clear than she had hoped.
It could now take up to three years to fulfil her promise to “do away with asylum seeker hotels” made during the election campaign, and sources in Whitehall say the picture is “much worse than we thought.” One told The Times:
It’s going to take a lot longer to clear than we anticipated. It certainly won’t be cleared in a year.
A Labour party source added:
We have inherited a completely failed immigration system from the Tories. Including them spending over £700 million on Rwanda, and gimmicks that didn’t work. We’re working on clearing down the backlog they left behind, they clearly did nothing at all in the months before the election.
However, the latest figure is up slightly from the 118,329 pending at the end of March this year, showing an increase in the final three months of the 12-month period.
Earlier this month, Ms. Cooper told broadcasters that the government was making progress on clearing the backlog of asylum seekers and returning those with no right to be in the UK “so we can end these very expensive refugee hotels.”
Labour’s manifesto, published ahead of the general election, said the party would “clean up the asylum system so that it works quickly, rigorously and fairly.” The manifesto said:
We will hire additional caseworkers to clear the Conservatives’ backlog and end asylum hotels, saving the taxpayer billions of pounds.
