I always find it fascinating that the Opposition continue to raise these questions with the Government, because if I wind the clock back to 2016, there were no hotels in use for asylum accommodation. Asylum claims rose dramatically under the previous Government and only a couple of years ago asylum hotels reached a peak of over 400, which is starting to fall now. We inherited that massive number and are trying to deal with that backlog of asylum claims, and the asylum issue as a whole, in a proper and effective way.
For me, community cohesion means the best way to deal with that is to speed up asylum claims, to ensure we close those hotels as a matter of some urgency and to determine who has the right to asylum in this country. We then give them a 56 or 28-day period of settlement and remove those individuals who have no right to reside in this country, their asylum claim having failed. With due respect to the noble Lord, the previous Government failed miserably on all those things. We are trying to do them.
People have a right to protest. But people also have a right to understand why and how we are dealing with this issue and what we are doing to resolve it to maintain community cohesion so that people welcome those who are fleeing persecution, war, starvation and the other forms of economic misery driving them to seek asylum in Europe and this country.