The number of asylum hotels in use increased from 10 to over 100 while Chris Philp was immigration minister
The shadow home secretary Chris Philp has been set straight on both his own record as immigration minister, and the Conservatives’ use of asylum hotels while they were in government.
In an excruciating interview on BBC Radio 4, Philp tried to claim that if the use of asylum hotels had continued to halve, as they did in the last nine months of Sunak’s government, Labour would have ended their use by now.
After Philp repeatedly dodged journalist Emma Barnett’s questions, she highlighted his own record, noting asylum hotels rose from 10 to at least 149 during his tenure as immigration minister between February 2020 and September 2020.
That’s an astonishing record for a man who is coming on the radio under the leadership of a woman now saying let’s get rid of asylum hotels,” she said.
On Tuesday, the High Court granted Epping Forest District Council an injunction to evict migrants being housed at The Bell Hotel in Epping.
Kemi Badenoch has since written to all Conservative councils to tell them she will support any similar legal moves to evict asylum seekers from hotels.
Philp also claimed the Tories’ Rwanda plan would have reduced small boat crossings to zero and criticised Labour again for scrapping it.
Barnett called his argument “old rope”.
She pointed out that Nick Timothy has written an article in The Telegraph today, stating that immigration is the biggest single reason the Tories are in the predicament they’re in.
Timothy also wrote: “crucially we must be brutally honest about our record”.
“Are you being brutally honest about the Conservative record right now when you won’t engage even with what happened during your long tenure in power?,” Barnett asked.
Philp said the Tories had acknowledged the mistakes they made while in government. Barnett asked if the Tories’ expansion of asylum hotels was a mistake.
The shadow home secretary said: “I mean yes it was, and we wanted to get it down.” He then repeated his point that the Tories did reduce the number of asylum hotels, and that if that trend had continued by now there would be no asylum hotels.
“You can’t say there would be no asylum hotels, you simply can’t because you don’t know what would be going on now if you were in power,” Barnett hit back.
Philp went on to say that if the Conservatives were back in power, they would still pursue a migrant deterrent strategy, similar to their failed Rwanda plan, which cost the taxpayer £700 million and led to no deportations.
Asked where the Tories would house the 32,000 asylum seekers currently in hotels, he referred to the Napier Barracks and Bibby Stockholm.
“You can’t boast about that, it was plagued with problems, fire safety concerns…,” she pointed out, making it clear that the Tories still have no solutions.
Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward
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