Britain will house up to 900 asylum seekers at two military bases, the government said on Tuesday, as public anger rises over the use of hotels as temporary accommodation for migrants.
The prime minister’s Labour government promised last year to shut down asylum hotels and tackle criminal groups that have smuggled migrants through the English Channel. But the number of arrivals has risen significantly in the past year. About 32,000 now live in hotels, and the costs to house them are expected to skyrocket.
Unruly and sometimes violent protests flared at asylum-seeker hotels over the summer across Britain after a resident sexually assaulted a teenage girl. The man was accidentally released from prison on Friday and caught by police on Sunday, and the government said it would deport him.
The pressure has been intense on the government, which is legally required to accommodate asylum seekers if they otherwise face homelessness. A scathing official report released by Parliament’s Home Affairs Committee on Monday accused the government of squandering billions on what it called a “failed, chaotic and expensive system” to house them.
The Conservative Party, which was in power from 2010 to July 2024, opened asylum housing at two military bases in southern England that remain active, with a combined maximum capacity of 2,045 people.
But both sites were hampered by legal challenges, delays and local opposition, and several military bases and locations such as former prisons that the former government wanted to use were never opened.
Before winning last year’s election, Labour had criticized the Conservative Party’s asylum accommodation policies as costly, ineffective and “inhuman.” In a statement on Tuesday, the government said it had learned lessons from the Conservatives’ use of military bases, though it did not elaborate.
When questioned during an appearance on BBC News on Tuesday, the defense minister, Luke Pollard, said the military bases could “provide adequate accommodation for asylum seekers” that would enable the government to speed up hotel closures.
The “public appetite to see every asylum hotel closed” was of “greater significance” than the cost, he said.
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The report that was released on Monday by the parliamentary committee was highly critical of using hotels, which had started as a temporary measure during the Covid pandemic. But it also cautioned against the use of military bases.
It said that medics and experts had “widely criticized” the two bases currently housing asylum seekers “as harmful” and that they also “attract considerably more public attention and concern than smaller sites.”
A March 2024 report by Britain’s public spending watchdog said that costs to convert military bases had been underestimated by tens of millions of pounds, and that housing asylum seekers at large sites was significantly more expensive than using hotels.
The Home Office, which is responsible for Britain’s asylum system, said in a statement that the two sites under development were Cameron Barracks, a British Army base in Scotland, and Crowborough Training Camp in southeastern England.
Both bases were previously used as temporary housing for Afghan families evacuated after the Taliban takeover in 2021.
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