Refugee Accommodation: Move-on Period

Question

Asked by

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the risks to social cohesion and the pressures on local councils and homelessness services presented by the recent decision to reduce the “move-on” period that newly recognised refugees are granted to find new accommodation to 28 days.

My Lords, in begging leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper, I declare an interest as a patron of ASSIST Sheffield, a wonderful charity that seeks to support asylum seekers and refugees in our city of sanctuary.

The Home Office monitors the impact of all its policies, especially move-on and the impact on wider communities and local authorities. We are committed to working closely with our partners to identify improvements and make efficiencies in supporting newly recognised refugees who move on from asylum accommodation.

I thank the Minister for his response, although my concerns are not entirely allayed. It is important to remember that those affected by move-on period policies have already been formally recognised by government as refugees, with rights to protection that are enshrined in international law. First, given the success of the recent 56-day extension, as reported by local authorities and numerous organisations supporting refugees, what impact assessment was undertaken in commending a reversion to 28 days? Secondly, what metric will His Majesty’s Government use to measure the success of this reversion? Finally, will the Minister commit to update the House within six months on the impact of this change?

I hope I can assist the right reverend Prelate with some clarification on what has actually happened. First, nobody who is in the system as of 1 September will have their 56-day period changed; that will still be operational. The pilot we are undertaking runs until December this year, and we will fully evaluate the pilot accordingly. Those individuals affected by the announcement on 27 August, who will change from 56 days to 28 days from 1 September, are single applicants; no families, nobody over 65 and nobody with disabilities will be impacted. We are trying to help tackle the longer-term asylum accommodation problem, but the pilot on 56 days to which the right reverend Prelate refers is continuing, and we will evaluate it and report back in due course. We have tweaked the pilot—we have not ended it—so we will continue to monitor the impact assessment issues. There will be full accountability on the outcome of the pilot when it is completed in December, but the majority of individuals to date will not be impacted by the change.

My Lords, the arguments given last year for the 28-day/56-day pilot are the same as those given currently. In the Statements given to this House at the time, it was quite clear that this pilot was until the end of July and would be evaluated and the results published by the end of the summer. We are bound to suspect that, in moving as quickly as the Government have now done in shifting people from hotels into the hands of local government so swiftly, they will meet with the same problem of more homelessness that we had last year. Can the Minister confirm that the assessment so far has found a reduction in homelessness, and will he publish the interim evaluation promised to this House last year?

I repeat what I said to the right reverend Prelate: we are running the pilot until December and it will be evaluated. We have made some changes from 1 September, but not for the vast majority of people in the system—they will still be eligible for 56 days. Families, over-65s and those with disabilities will not be affected; it is single applicants who will be affected from 1 September. As this House continues to press the Government on, we need to reduce the reliance on hotels and provide a move-on period. The objective of the actions we have taken now is to relieve some of those pressures on hotel and asylum accommodation.

My Lords, how are the Government working with places of worship to see how they could help alleviate some of the hotel usage problem? There are thousands of places of worship across our country; they should be playing their part. They are often large buildings with catering kitchens and everything else. It is about time we rethink how we look after people who come in but maybe should not be here and, in the meantime, utilise places of worship. They are often left empty and could probably do with a little financial assistance from the Government—but much less than hotels.

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her suggestion; I will certainly examine it. It is important that society as a whole embraces individuals who have come to this country fleeing persecution, hunger, war and destitution.

For those who are not across the detail of this proposal, it is about individuals who have been granted asylum and who are being helped to move on from that into the community to begin their new life with approved asylum status. We are trying to ensure that we evaluate that pilot, monitor it successfully and give due regard to those who are already under the 56-day period, but to look at what tweaks we can make, because there are immense pressures in the system on hotels and the whole House wants us to resolve that as a matter of urgency.

My Lords, the Home Office has reported that in some cases, when the 56 days expire, asylum seekers are simply refusing to leave the hotel. What are the consequences for them?

I am grateful for the noble Lord’s question. For individuals who have been granted asylum, under the pilot we have extended the period from 28 days to 56 days to ensure that transition takes place. We are now tweaking that for certain categories of individual applicants back to 28 days. In a sense, the noble Lord hits a very important point: the asylum claim has been approved, and the period—be it 28 or 56 days—is there for that transition. At the end of that period, the Government have fulfilled their responsibilities in the asylum claim approval and the hand-on period. Therefore, we need to ensure that individuals then begin their new life under their own steam.

My Lords, throughout the summer we all witnessed a number of protests relating to asylum accommodation, suggesting that social cohesion in certain areas is under severe pressure. Does the Minister recognise the challenges faced by local authorities and local residents’ frustration, given that the number of asylum seekers temporarily housed in hotels has increased by 8% since the end of June 2024?

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.

My Lords, I remind the Minister, when he refers to hotels, that in the last nine months of the last Government we halved the number of hotels being used to accommodate asylum seekers. That fall came to a grinding halt when the present Government came to power.

I draw the Minister’s attention to the question asked by my noble friend Lord Young, because I do not think he answered it. My noble friend asked what the consequences are, for those granted refugee status in asylum accommodation who fail to leave when they are supposed to, of their failure to leave that accommodation.

With due respect, I thought I did try to answer the question from the noble Lord, Lord Young. Heads are shaking, but I am accountable for my answers. At the end of that 28 or 56-day period, individuals will have to leave that accommodation. That is a consequence for them. We have given support, determined their asylum application and given a transition period, and then that asylum claim has been approved so people need to move on.

I will challenge the noble Lord back. At the peak in 2018, under his Government, there were 400-plus hotels in use, reduced to 210 now. In the past year we have saved £1 billion of taxpayers’ money, over and above what the previous Government—the noble Lord sat in the Cabinet—expended. That £1 billion is better spent on speeding up asylum claims and making sure we determine them as a matter of some urgency.