Tory MPs launch bid to stop migrants being housed in hotels

Tory MPs are to mount an attempt to bar migrants from being housed in hotels after a backlash over the cost of more than £6 million a day.

The MPs have tabled an amendment to the Illegal Migration Bill that would ban the use of hotels for any migrant held in the UK pending their removal.

The move came as new figures released by the Government to the Commons home affairs committee showed that housing asylum seekers and Afghan refugees in hotels had cost £1.84 billion in the first nine months of last year – equivalent to £6.68 million a night.

Earlier this month, The Telegraph revealed that the number of asylum seekers in hotels had reached 51,000. This week, it emerged that nearly 400 hotels across the UK are being contracted to house them.

Jonathan Gullis, the former minister who tabled the amendment, said it was designed to put pressure on the Government to deliver on its commitment to end the use of hotels for asylum seekers.

“It is very clear that there is public outrage about the use of hotels, particularly when nearly £7 million a day is being spent on them – money that could be going on education, health and levelling up opportunities in towns and cities across the whole of our great country,” he said.

The amendment has been signed by former ministers Sir John Hayes, Simon Clarke and David Jones as well as Danny Kruger, Boris Johnson’s former political secretary.

The Government will also face a backbench revolt over demands to spell out plans for legal and safe routes for refugees before the new legislation comes into force.

Ministers have pledged to consider plans for legal and safe routes once they have passed the Bill and brought illegal migration under control.

However, Tim Loughton, a former minister, has laid an amendment that would require ministers to have the plans in place before the legislation took effect and that the countries should be additional to those already provided, such as Ukraine, Afghanistan, Syria and Hong Kong.

The Bill is due to be considered on Monday and Tuesday, with a full committee stage being held on the floor of the Commons.

It places a legal duty on the Home Secretary to swiftly remove migrants who arrive in the UK back to their home country or to a third country, such as Rwanda, where they can claim asylum.

Up to 40 Tories are thought likely to back rebel amendments that would toughen the legislation by giving UK courts the power to ignore rulings by Strasbourg judges.

They are designed to ensure plans to detain and remove migrants within weeks of arriving in the UK illegally can go ahead irrespective of any judgments from the European Court of Human Rights.