Minister says government committed to getting all asylum seekers out of hotels after report says system ‘chaotic’
Good morning. When Jimmy Carter was US president, he gave a famous address in 1979 saying the country was suffering a crisis of confidence. It became known as the malaise speech, and now it is widely regarded as a mistake, because it was unduly pessimistic and because, in the presidential election the following year, voters turned to the much more upbeat Ronald Reagaan.
Yesterday Wes Streeting, the health secretary, had his own Jimmy Carter moment on Sky News, saying Britons are in despair. He said:
I am battling cultural challenges in the NHS too, whether that’s people abdicating responsibility, not listening to patients, covering things up when things go wrong.
And all of those things undermine public trust and confidence, not just in the NHS, but in the ability of government, by which I mean any government, to be able to effect change.
And there is a deep disillusionment in this country at the moment, and I would say a growing sense of despair, about whether anyone is capable of turning this country around.
Streeting also said that he was an optimist, and that he could see “green shoots of recovery”, but it is the “growing sense of despair” line that has stuck.
And today Westminster is full of news that goes some way to reinforcing Streeting’s point. This morning the media are debating a report saying asylum hotels have been a disaster, and this afternoon there will be a statement in the Commons about a farcical prisoner release. We’ve also got a press conference from Reform UK (a party that thrives by fomenting despair), and then towards the end of the day a select commitee about a botched spy prosecution that also implies the British state has a default failure setting.
Here is Diane Taylor’s story about the report on asylum hotels.
And here is the full report from the home affairs select committee.
Steve Reed, the housing secretary, was defending the government on the airwaves this morning. He pointed out that the contracts criticised by the committee were signed by the last government. And he insisted that the government would get all asylum seekers out of hotels, by using purpose-built accommodation on sites like ex military bases instead. He told the Today programme the tovernment was looking at “modular” forms of building to ensure sites could go up quickly.
You can use modular forms of building. That means it can go up much faster than would normally be the case, and there are planning processes that we can use in these circumstances to make sure that the planning system itself isn’t delayed.
I’m expecting announcements to come on that within weeks, so we just have to wait and see.
It would be foolish to come on your show and announce things where the detail hasn’t been fully worked out, because you’d pick holes in it, quite rightly so.
So we want to get it right, but the intention is to get those former military bases is one example of it, where we could use big sites and get people on there and end the use of hotels entirely. That’s where we want to get to.
Here is the agenda for the day.
Morning: Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, is in Saudi Arabia where she is speaking at the Fortune Global Forum in Riyadh.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
Morning: Kemi Badenoch is on a visit in Essex.
Afternoon: Keir Starmer arrives in Turkey, where he is holding talks with the president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, mostly about an order for Typhoon fighter jets from the UK.
2pm: Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, holds a press conference.
2.30pm: Pat McFadden, the work and pensions secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
After 3.30pm: David Lammy, the justice secretary and deputy PM, gives a statement to MPs on the accidental release of the Epping sex offender, Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu.
4.30pm: Stephen Parkinson, the director of public prosecutions, gives evidence to the joint committee on the national security strategy about the collapse of the China spy case, alongside Tom Little KC, lead counsel in the case. At 5.30pm Matthew Collins, the deputy national security adviser, and Sir Chris Wormald, the cabinet secretary, give evidence.
If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line when comments are open (normally between 10am and 3pm BST at the moment), or message me on social media. I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word.
If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn.bsky.social. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X, but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary.
I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.
Key events
The Guardian would like to hear from parents who have had to live in temporary accommodation with children. There is more about the call-out here, including a form where you can submit a response.
Labour’s decision to cut time refugees get to find alternative housing ‘extremely disappointing’, committee says
But the Commons home affairs committee’s report is also critical of some aspects of what the Home Office has been doing on asylum hotels since Labour took power. Here are some of the points it makes about Labour’s record on this issue.
-
The committee expresses concerns about the government’s plan to move asylum seekers out of hotels and place them in “large sites” instead, such as former military bases. (See 9.23am.) It says:
The [Home Office] is considering the use of large sites in its approach to asylum accommodation, having previously said it would move away from their use. In principle, large sites can provide suitable temporary accommodation. However, they have generally proved more costly to deliver than hotel accommodation and will not enable the department to drive down costs in the same way as expanding dispersal accommodation. If the department chooses to pursue large sites, it needs to fully understand and accept this trade off. It must learn the lessons from its previous mistakes in rushing to deliver short-term solutions that later unravel.
The government has committed to reducing the cost of the asylum system and ending the use of hotels by 2029. This is a stated Government priority, but making promises to appeal to popular sentiment without setting out a clear and fully articulated plan for securing alternative accommodation risks under-delivery and consequently undermining public trust still further. The Home Office has failed to share a clear strategy for the long-term delivery of asylum accommodation.
The number of asylum seekers in hotels is currently significantly lower than during the peak of hotel use—32,059 people as of June 2025, compared to 56,042 in September 2023—although the number of asylum seekers accommodated in hotels was 8% higher in June 2025 compared to June 2024.
-
It says it is “extremely disappointing” that the Home Office abandoned a pilot programme giving refugees 56 days to find alternative accommodation if they have to leave Home Office housing (like a hotel) because their asylum application has been accepted. The Home Office has reverted to 28 days’ notice, even though the 56 days’s notice system was said to reduce the number or refugees finding themselves homeless. It says:
Given the high level of support we received for the 56 day move on period in the evidence we received, this decision is extremely disappointing.
Last week the Home Office lost a court case over this policy.
What Commons home affairs committee said about Home Office’s ‘chaotic’ asylum hotels policy under Tories
The Commons home affairs committee has a Labour majority (like all Commons select committees) but it is chaired by a former Tory culture secretary, Karen Bradley. Party loyalty has not stopped her producing a report that is quite damning about the record of the last government.
Here are extracts from the report’s summary commenting on the Conservatives’ record.
Over the past six years, the Home Office has presided over an increasingly expensive asylum accommodation system. The expected cost of the Home Office’s asylum accommodation contracts for the ten years between 2019–29 has more than tripled, from £4.5bn to £15.3bn. External factors – the Covid-19 pandemic and the dramatic increase in small boat arrivals – and decisions by the previous government – such as pausing asylum decision-making while it pursued the Rwanda scheme – have meant that the Home Office has had to accommodate a growing number of people for longer periods of time. At the end of 2018 around 47,500 asylum seekers were accommodated by the Home Office. As of June 2025, the Home Office was responsible for accommodating around 103,000 people …
We heard powerful evidence that during the 2019–2024 parliament the Home Office focused on pursuing high-risk, poorly planned policy solutions. Failures of leadership at a senior level, shifting priorities, and political and operational pressure for quick results meant that the department was incapable of getting a grip on the situation, and allowed costs to spiral.
The Home Office has become heavily reliant on the costly use of hotels for asylum accommodation – which are unpopular with local communities and largely unsuitable for accommodating asylum seekers. It has used large scale contracts with private providers to deliver asylum accommodation, but these contracts have provided few levers to control costs and ensure that providers are delivering the accommodation required. The Home Office seems to have neglected the day-to-day management of these contracts, failing to protect value for money for the taxpayer. Two accommodation providers owe millions to the Home Office in excess profits, but the Home Office only appears to have started the process for recouping these profits in 2024 and has yet to reclaim these profits from providers. This money should be supporting the delivery of public services, not sitting in the bank accounts of private businesses.
The Home Office has undoubtedly been operating in an extremely challenging environment, but its chaotic response has demonstrated that it has not been up to the challenge.
Social landlords in England now forced to fix emergencies within 24 hours
The first phase of Awaab’s law, which promises to protect tenants from dangerous social housing conditions, comes into force in England on Monday, in memory of a two-year-old boy who died after exposure to mould in his home, Chris Osuh reports.
Freedom from Torture, a charity that works with asylum seekers, is concerned about the idea that refugees might be removed from hotels and placed in barrack-style accommodation instead. (See 9.23am.) In a response to the Home Office report, Sile Reynolds, its head of asylum advocacy, said:
Everyday Freedom from Torture therapists see first-hand the devastating impact that hotels, military sites and shared bedrooms have on people who came to this country seeking safety. Living in fear, without privacy, stability, or access to proper healthcare, strips people of their dignity and undermines their recovery.
The Ggvernment now has a crucial opportunity to once and for all transform our asylum accommodation system so that it is safe, dignified and based in our communities. They can act now to relieve pressure on hotels by making better quality and faster asylum decisions, including swiftly granting status to people from countries where they are almost always recognised as refugees like Syria and Sudan.
The average person saw “no meaningful improvement in their life” over Labour’s first year in power, a survey of thousands of Britons has suggested. In its report on the findings of a survey by Carnegie UK, a wellbeing charity, PA Media says:
An annual “Life in the UK” survey of 7,000 people carried out by charity Carnegie UK found stagnating wellbeing and persistent economic hardship for millions since 2023.
Sarah Davidson, the charity’s chief executive, said the survey “shows that between May 2024 and May 2025, the average person in the UK saw no meaningful improvement in their life”.
She added: “Public services and systems are barely working for too many households, and our research shows that poorer people, larger families and people in social housing are still getting left behind.”
Davidson acknowledged that there were “some emerging signs of hope”, with people finding it more affordable to heat their homes and “slight improvements” in mental and physical health.
But she warned that these improvements were not evenly distributed, with older, wealthier homeowners reporting much higher wellbeing than younger, poorer people in less secure housing.
She said: “Underlying all these results is the inescapable fact that significant and damaging inequalities persist across all parts of the UK.”
The Life in the UK survey asked a range of questions on economic, social, environmental and democratic topics to come up with an overall “wellbeing score” out of 100.
This year’s survey reported an overall wellbeing score of 62, one point higher than last year and the same score as 2023.
These findings help to corroborate (at least a bit) what Wes Streeting was going on about yesterday. (See 9.23am.)
Green party calls for Home Office to be broken up, saying seperate department should handle migration
The Green party has called for the Home Office to be broken up in the light of today’s report about asylum hotels. It has put out this statement from Rachel Millward, the party’s co-deputy leader.
‘Failed, chaotic and expensive’ – these are the words used by today’s report to describe the government’s asylum accommodation system, but they apply just as fittingly to the Home Office as a whole which has spent decades wasting taxpayer money in a destructive pursuit of the most hostile migration system possible.
This is just one in a litany of reports which lays bare the Home Office’s dysfunction – in this case, allowing private companies to make obscene profits while vulnerable people are put at risk and community tensions are ratcheted up to breaking point.
If we are to have a functional and fair migration system, the Home Office must be broken up so that migration can be dealt with by a department designed to make the system work, not simply project a hardline stance to the public no matter the cost to the taxpayer or the impact on migrants.
England and Wales prison checks to be enhanced after inmate released in error
Prisons are expected to begin enhanced checks before inmates are released after a man who sexually assaulted a young girl was mistakenly freed from jail, Kevin Rawlinson reports.
In the Daily Telegraph, Charles Hymas says prison governors are not happy about being asked to carry out enhanced checks on people being released as a matter of routine. In his story he reports:
Governors warned it would add to the workloads of already-overstretched staff and questioned whether it would solve a problem that has yet to be identified by any investigation. The new checks could take as long as 45 minutes per prisoner, one source said.
One senior governor said: “I understand the government is very eager to prevent this from happening again, but there’s an investigation which has only just been commissioned.
“Until that’s under way, the prison service won’t know what went wrong or whether the proposed checks are what are needed to prevent it happening again.
Minister says government committed to getting all asylum seekers out of hotels after report says system ‘chaotic’
Good morning. When Jimmy Carter was US president, he gave a famous address in 1979 saying the country was suffering a crisis of confidence. It became known as the malaise speech, and now it is widely regarded as a mistake, because it was unduly pessimistic and because, in the presidential election the following year, voters turned to the much more upbeat Ronald Reagaan.
Yesterday Wes Streeting, the health secretary, had his own Jimmy Carter moment on Sky News, saying Britons are in despair. He said:
I am battling cultural challenges in the NHS too, whether that’s people abdicating responsibility, not listening to patients, covering things up when things go wrong.
And all of those things undermine public trust and confidence, not just in the NHS, but in the ability of government, by which I mean any government, to be able to effect change.
And there is a deep disillusionment in this country at the moment, and I would say a growing sense of despair, about whether anyone is capable of turning this country around.
Streeting also said that he was an optimist, and that he could see “green shoots of recovery”, but it is the “growing sense of despair” line that has stuck.
And today Westminster is full of news that goes some way to reinforcing Streeting’s point. This morning the media are debating a report saying asylum hotels have been a disaster, and this afternoon there will be a statement in the Commons about a farcical prisoner release. We’ve also got a press conference from Reform UK (a party that thrives by fomenting despair), and then towards the end of the day a select commitee about a botched spy prosecution that also implies the British state has a default failure setting.
Here is Diane Taylor’s story about the report on asylum hotels.
And here is the full report from the home affairs select committee.
Steve Reed, the housing secretary, was defending the government on the airwaves this morning. He pointed out that the contracts criticised by the committee were signed by the last government. And he insisted that the government would get all asylum seekers out of hotels, by using purpose-built accommodation on sites like ex military bases instead. He told the Today programme the tovernment was looking at “modular” forms of building to ensure sites could go up quickly.
You can use modular forms of building. That means it can go up much faster than would normally be the case, and there are planning processes that we can use in these circumstances to make sure that the planning system itself isn’t delayed.
I’m expecting announcements to come on that within weeks, so we just have to wait and see.
It would be foolish to come on your show and announce things where the detail hasn’t been fully worked out, because you’d pick holes in it, quite rightly so.
So we want to get it right, but the intention is to get those former military bases is one example of it, where we could use big sites and get people on there and end the use of hotels entirely. That’s where we want to get to.
Here is the agenda for the day.
Morning: Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, is in Saudi Arabia where she is speaking at the Fortune Global Forum in Riyadh.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
Morning: Kemi Badenoch is on a visit in Essex.
Afternoon: Keir Starmer arrives in Turkey, where he is holding talks with the president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, mostly about an order for Typhoon fighter jets from the UK.
2pm: Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, holds a press conference.
2.30pm: Pat McFadden, the work and pensions secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
After 3.30pm: David Lammy, the justice secretary and deputy PM, gives a statement to MPs on the accidental release of the Epping sex offender, Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu.
4.30pm: Stephen Parkinson, the director of public prosecutions, gives evidence to the joint committee on the national security strategy about the collapse of the China spy case, alongside Tom Little KC, lead counsel in the case. At 5.30pm Matthew Collins, the deputy national security adviser, and Sir Chris Wormald, the cabinet secretary, give evidence.
If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line when comments are open (normally between 10am and 3pm BST at the moment), or message me on social media. I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word.
If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn.bsky.social. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X, but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary.
I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.
