Housing secretary says purpose built ‘modular’ structures on sites like ex military bases is the answer to ending reliance on hotels
The Commons home affairs committee has a Labour majority (like all Commons select committees) but it is chaired by a former Tory culture secretary, Karen Bradley. Party loyalty has not stopped her producing a report that is quite damning about the record of the last government.
Here are extracts from the report’s summary commenting on the Conservatives’ record.
Over the past six years, the Home Office has presided over an increasingly expensive asylum accommodation system. The expected cost of the Home Office’s asylum accommodation contracts for the ten years between 2019–29 has more than tripled, from £4.5bn to £15.3bn. External factors – the Covid-19 pandemic and the dramatic increase in small boat arrivals – and decisions by the previous government – such as pausing asylum decision-making while it pursued the Rwanda scheme – have meant that the Home Office has had to accommodate a growing number of people for longer periods of time. At the end of 2018 around 47,500 asylum seekers were accommodated by the Home Office. As of June 2025, the Home Office was responsible for accommodating around 103,000 people …
We heard powerful evidence that during the 2019–2024 parliament the Home Office focused on pursuing high-risk, poorly planned policy solutions. Failures of leadership at a senior level, shifting priorities, and political and operational pressure for quick results meant that the department was incapable of getting a grip on the situation, and allowed costs to spiral.
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