Caroline Voaden: Government must treat refugee crisis urgently

Last week, a blistering new report from the Conservative-chaired home affairs select committee laid bare how the Home Office had squandered billions of pounds of taxpayer money on asylum accommodation. 

“Flawed contracts” and “incompetent delivery” were partly to blame, with the department unable to cope with surging demand, leading to hotels becoming the “go-to solution” and expected hotel costs hitting £15.3bn by 2029.

It is hard to read this report without considering where this money could have been better spent – on child poverty measures, for example, our SEND system, or declining public transport services. Or indeed on the asylum system itself, which, as the report notes, crumbled under the Tories. 

According to the committee, the Home Office was so focused on blusterous, “high-risk, poorly planned” strategies, like the Rwanda Scheme, it lost control of the basics. While the current shadow Home Secretary may wish to wholly blame their successors for this mess, the statistics cannot hide the Conservatives’ historic failure on immigration. 

In 2014, 87% of asylum applications were processed within 6 months. By 2023, this figure had collapsed to just 16%. It was blindingly obvious to anyone but the Conservatives that their Rwanda Plan was never going work, and that pausing claims to purse this policy would make the backlog worse. 

Thanks to their failure, the debate in the UK has become toxic, with a recent YouGov poll finding immigration and asylum to be the second most important topic nationally for voters. As venues that once housed wedding receptions and other special, personal events became homes for asylum seekers, these hotels have become flashpoints for political resentment and a physical embodiment of the Conservatives losing control of our borders. 

Perhaps the single biggest consequence of this crisis has been the rise of Reform. But like their Conservative peers, they have no long-term solutions to fix the problem. Their mass deportation plan would cost billions and see the UK paying murderous dictators and regimes, like the Taliban. 

It would also do nothing to dispel the toxicity swirling in our country today, but Reform knows this, and they do not care. 

It is my view that we in the UK must treat asylum seekers with dignity and respect, and the UK must uphold a fair, compassionate, and efficient asylum system, not one built on delay and distrust. 

As a direct result of the Conservatives’ decision to stop processing asylum claims, more than 90,000 traumatised people are now cooped up in hotel rooms, often with angry protestors at the gates. As one asylum seeker wrote in an open letter last week, these people want to work and contribute to a British society that has always accepted immigrants from around the world. 

But they cannot work, or rent a home, live in suitable conditions, or move on with their lives. Now, thanks to the growing number of protests, they are also living in fear of violence and intimidation. 

While Labour’s plans to close asylum hotels by 2029 is practical, I am disappointed by other counterproductive policies they have pursued, like suspending family reunion pathways and reducing the move-on period for new refugees, instead of properly challenging Reform and the Conservatives. 

They have also failed to speed up processing claims. At the current rate, it would take over five years to clear the backlog. 

That is why the Liberal Democrats have called on the Government to declare the asylum backlog a national emergency and to set up Nightingale processing centres – like the Nightingale hospitals we saw during the pandemic – to clear the asylum backlog within 6 months. 

Until the Government treats this crisis with the urgency and seriousness it demands, little will change, the vulnerable people caught in the system will continue to suffer and the toxicity surrounding it will only deepen.

If you wish to contact me about this, or any other issue you are facing, please email me at: caroline.voaden.mp@parliament.uk.  

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