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August 7, 2024 - 10:00am
If there is a golden thread running through British politics, it is saving the Treasury money. The latest case in point is Labour’s extraordinary decision on housing asylum seekers.
Yvette Cooper has apparently ordered the Home Office to start seeking out “homes of multiple occupancy, family properties, former care homes and student accommodation”. Doing this would, undoubtedly, save the Treasury money. Building a proper, purpose-built asylum estate is expensive, and retrofitting ex-military bases not much less so. Hotels were cheaper, which is why ministers kept using them.
But despite fulfilling that highest good, this policy is still utterly, dizzyingly mad. It is hard to think how a government actively trying to whip up resentment of asylum seekers could come up with something better. First, it’s dangerous. Far-Right elements have targeted hotels housing asylum seekers during the recent unrest. If the Government expects trouble to persist — and Keir Starmer has pledged a “standing army” of riot-control officers, so presumably he does — it is inexplicable that Cooper’s new policy is to scatter asylum seekers across thousands of indefensible properties across hundreds of towns.
Second, we have a massive housing crisis, and shortages of all four of the types of accommodation Labour is looking to buy up, including student housing. HMOs in particular are our highest-density tenure type, and are most prevalent where shortages are most acute.
If the Home Secretary gets her way, thousands of communities will suddenly have one or more local, in-their-face examples of the Government prioritising asylum seekers for scarce housing. These will be spread out across residential areas and literally closer to home.
Labour may try to argue that the overall impact will be minimal. There are, after all, only 35,000 or so asylum seekers currently housed in hotels versus expert estimates of a national housing shortfall of four million properties.
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SubscribeThis policy isn’t primarily about saving money, it’s about normalising asylum as just another form of migration. Roughly equivalent to student visas or seasonal agriculture workers.
Asylum seekers, it can then be argued, are “an integral part of our rich, multi-cultural communities”. The idea that their status should be considered any different to, for example, an Indian IT consultant on a sponsored work visa will be derided as far right fascism.
Does anyone seriously doubt that the current Home Office “clear the backlog” push (since Labour gained power) will result in anything other than mass approval of the outstanding asylum applications ? Or that they will in time follow the Lib Dem policy of legalising illegal immigrants ? I see that the Lib Dem policy was to scrap the Illegla Immigration Act. Most of these people don’t believe there is any such thing as illegal immigration – and that what the population as a whole thinks simply doesn’t matter.
We have far too many third-rate ‘universities’, many of which are losing vast amounts of money which will have, in the end, to come from taxpayers anyway. If a few were adapted to meet this need the loss would barely be noticed. We could then also use the teaching facilities to educate asylum seekers in the language and culture of our country as well as in workplace skills.
Why not?
Because it encourages more illegals to come over.
That’s a good point. I was thinking of how to deal with the existing mass without damaging the housing market still further.
Like it was suggested above and I have suggested on this and other forums – Put them under canvass and leave ‘built’ houses to us Brits (and others who may be made welcome). There is a company in the UK which makes portacabins in ‘flat-pack’ form mainly for oil and other exploration companies. These, when unfolded, only need water, power and drainage attachments to be immediately usuable. They can be configured for any application you can dream up. The “guests” themselves can be put under canvass (proper miltary style.)
Sunderland University has been actively recruiting students from Nigeria and perhaps other African countries. Taking a degree or MA at the University is a well recognised means of getting a foothold in the UK with a view to legal immigration. Five years ago there were scarcely any Africans in Sunderland, today if you drive into the centre on some streets you could think you were in a majority African country.
Those taking this route to immigration are for the most part well-educated intelligent Christians who come with their family and who are eager to get away from the corruption of Nigeria and other African countries and appreciate the comparative stability of the UK. However, it is unsurprising if the white working class of Sunderland, a city that used to be prosperous on the back of mining and shipbuilding, get the impression that they are being replaced by immigrants and that the immigrants are favoured in a way they are not. This is not necessarily true but it is not surprising if resentment is the result. Of course, rioting is not the answer but you would have to be singularly blinkered not to expect some reaction to such a rapid ethnic change in an already declining and deprived city.
You can not blame Nigerians for trying to come here but Nigeria being shite state is down to them.
Importing savages into uk is not solving any problems but creates many.
It has to stop.
Container villages maybe?
Honestly don’t know what the problem with the Bibby Stockholm barge was – apart from the legionella bacteria, but blimey, we had that in one of Vienna’s hospitals recently, an 82 year old woman died, it was thought that she got it from ingesting water in the shower. They went through all the procedures to remove the bacteria and there was no national outcry.
Obviously you can’t leave migrants to sleep on park benches, but the signal to them and to the public financing them must be this: if you barge (no pun intended) into the country uninvited, you will be put in the least appealing accommodation.
Putting illegal immigrants in hotels and then taking heating allowances off people who’ve paid into the system their entire lives – what on earth are they thinking? Are they thinking?
“Obviously you can’t leave migrants to sleep on park benches,“
Why not ? Government officials, going about their daily business, in London, don’t seem overly concerned, as they step over rough sleepers on their way too and from work.
A large oversimplification, obviously, but no less pertinent for all that.
We certainly don’t need more people sleeping on park benches but why should we accommodate and service uninvited incomers more lavishly than they endured at the Calais encampments from which they came?
Apart from anything, it will get the human rights people onto you – see Ireland: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c6p2yez5d3yo
Yes, I know it’s perverse to have to treat people who shouldn’t be there better than your own, but it’s an extra headache you don’t need.
As far as containers are concerned, you’ll have people whining about that too, but they can be faced down by saying a) other countries like Germany do this already and b) many people like me who went to British state comprehensives in the 90s did a lot of our schooling in Portakabins (occasionally afflicted with mould), as there wasn’t enough space for us. We survived.
Can’t you set up some big facility in a remote area, fence it off and let them sleep in tents?
I can’t see why not as this is how the UN houses the displaced.
Look at what Italy and Giorgia Meloni are doing in Albania. I believe their offshore migrant processing centre (sounds awful, but so what!) has taken less than a year to get built.
Gruinard Island
If migrants really want to come to Britain so badly, they should be happy to sleep in any part of it. I’m sure our well-kept park benches are much better than any part of Syria, Iraq or Afghanistan.
When the Bibby Stockholm was in commercial use housing rig workers in the North Sea, the oil company extended the contract because the feedback from the workers was so positive.
Personally, I think that every single MP should have a family of asylum seekers living in their house.
Skin in the game and all that.
Exactly. Make them live by the consequences of their own rules.
Presumably you would exempt those that have actively voted to reduce immigration. Not sure Farage and some others would appreciate being rewarded in this way for voicing opposition to the policy.
No exemptions. Half of them have 2 houses (largely at our expense) anyway.
Unfortunately, there’s not many “families”, just single men
Don’t forget the virtue signalling middle class who are in favour of illegal migration, they should take their fair share of the asylum seekers, why should the poorer neighbourhoods have to accept yet more migrants? Perhaps if affects the white liberal saviours they won’t be quite as happy to aid this invasion
It’s simple: turn back the boats! And immediately deport any who get through.
to where?
It’s difficult to conceive of such ‘clever’ people being quite so insensitive to the world about them. They don’t act, they react. Not a very clever, or grown up way to run a government, or a country !
These are people who’ve spent their lives in the cosy embrace of the state, never experiencing the insecurity that the rest of us have to deal with every day. It’s unrealistic to expect much common sense.
These are people who are usually immune from the consequences of the policies they foist on others. They cannot understand why anyone would be upset over rampant immigration because it does not affect them. Only when they personally experience the results of their ideas will their minds change. Maybe.
Where else will they get their servants?
The far-left always seek to rub your noises in it and then dare you do say something. It’s part of their bullying nature – double, triple down, wind people up and then play authoritarian victim when the actual victim dares to stir.
“A party of service”.
Two-tier Keir strikes again! Social housing for illegal immigrants not the locals. Free rentals for the illegals, high rents for the locals.
He is even worse than Rishi at politics! That takes some doing.
On the contrary, Rishi’s July election was a masterstroke – look at what it’s now doing to Labour!
Except in 5 year, when we have the next election-if we’re allowed one-the country will be in tatters (provided we haven’t fallen into a Lebanon or Yugoslavia type civil war)
As is my wont, I occasionally try to strike up conversations with the new incoming Indians, especially with waiters/waitresses in restaurants and cafes in Milton Keynes, Cambridge, London mostly. This has been driven by my wondering how on earth the new arrivals working on the minimum wage (or lower) can possibly afford any housing in cities like Cambridge and London.
And the picture which has emerged is squalid, and it is guaranteed to implode sooner or later. Several have characterised themselves as ‘students’ to me (at institutions I had never heard of) despite working full time and often despite looking like in their mid twenties to early thirties. They are invariably in HMO accommodation, sometimes multiple people sharing a room, especially in London. Nine or ten to a three-bed terrace is not uncommon in London, with one (perhaps apocryphal) disgusting story of occupants resorting to taking dumps in the back garden for days because the toilets all became blocked. Occupations vary: waiter, Deliveroo driving etc because they are not really qualified for the professions despite often being reasonably educated. Once in a while I come across high-end skills like architect but working as Uber driver while attempting desperately to break into the profession because it’s apparently very difficult unless you have UK degrees and certifications. The story is different if they have in-demand skills like doctor or nurse or IT etc. because better paid work is available. Also, the occasional (unmarried) programmer who lives HMO to gather money because there is little chance of saving and building capital otherwise in places like London. Also the occasional young couple with children living in HMO in a single room, with one story of how the toddler fell ill in a mould filled filth infested room, followed by a couple of days in A&E, followed by several days in hospital, followed by the family borrowing money to get back to India to try and treat their kid.
The curious thing is, these are often people who have ‘invested’ tens of thousands to get to the UK, not insignificant amounts in Indian terms, and I wonder why they did it if they had that much money in the first place, but that is not the type of question I can ask in a casual conversation. They are not stupid, they have varying degrees of skills, they all have hopes of eventually emerging into prosperity, buying a house etc, but I’m struggling to see how that can possibly happen for them – there is no chance of ever gathering enough money to buy a house because renting eats big chunks of anything they can possibly earn. And this is the Indians I am talking about, but there are of course multiple other ethnicities pouring into the UK. I know the Indian migrants are aware of their ‘situation’, because one of them once mentioned to me, somewhat resentfully (on the back of my question if they got any in-work benefits) that unlike migrants with young children (Afghans, Somalis were mentioned) they had no chance of getting any kind of social housing. I know very little of the migrants in the north or of migrants in other ethnic groups so I cannot speak about how they manage their existence in the UK, but I genuinely cannot see how any of them will emerge into prosperity any time soon – and I genuinely believe that in around two decades the state will no longer be able to support anyone with free healthcare or pensions or any of the rich-country bon-bons, so how the millions of migrants now being taken on will eke out survival without any buildup of assets like housing in that situation is anyone’s guess.
There is also a ratchet coming around housing when the law starts to get tightened so slum landlords are driven out but then the incoming migrants will still need somewhere to stay. Slum tent encampments in Hyde Park perhaps?
This is one of the best posts I’ve read on this topic. I often wonder whether the young people who support the open borders policies realise they won’t get a pension or free healthcare when the get old.
Virtue signalling is much more important.
Yes, I often ask this question of young woke morons in London.
Unfortunately most have degrees in pointless subjects and end up working as bar staff or bar managers.
I suggested to all to take up the trade like plumbing or electrician to earn more money but they all said it is hard work.
As I know to my cost, when young you think you will live forever. Projecting your own old age as a thought is firmly pushed away.
A business that provides in-home care in my county employs people from the subcontinent. They are paid less than what the employer would have to pay a person born in the UK. He finds them accommodation, which he owns. He is quite rich.
These Indians come to Britain because it is the land of wealth and opportunity. If you go to any major Indian city, there are many magnificent buildings which were constructed by the British (not to mention most of the railways), all of which reinforces the wealth and power of Britain. Of course, most of those things were built 100 or more years ago, when Britain was wealthy and powerful. I remember being told of Indonesians who, during WW2, said they weren’t worried about being invaded by the Japanese because the Dutch Navy would come and protect them. When Indonesia was settled by the Dutch, the Dutch Navy was the most powerful in the world. However, its funny how much can change in a century or two.
The convoluted financial instruments that eventually caused the financial crisis in 2008 were designed on the theory that by spreading risk thinly like pollen over a field the danger of failure of any one institution was minimal.
In reality, it made it impossible to determine which bank was exposed to risk. This resulted in a loss of trust in all institutions.
Spreading asylum seekers over the landscape of Britain (were their claims rejected in France or Germany?) might look like it would make them invisible. But what if trust in the authorities and the institutions has already been lost?
There are empty properties in high streets everywhere. Some are large department stores built either before or just after the Great War.
A shrewd government would put the asylum seekers in Putney, Barnes, Richmond, Chiswick, Highgate, Hampstead, Muswell Hill, North Oxford, Bath, the Cotswolds …
If the metropolitan class that profits most from uncontrolled immigration were made to bear some of the costs we might have a slightly more realistic debate around it.
That class is also less likely to throw things.
It is well enough known that if you treat one child well and another ill the latter is quite likely to come to resent and bully the former. If you lavish free accommodation and support on illegal incomers while neglecting the state services to the native population and taxing everything that moves resentment will rise and the descendants of Wellington’s brave but sometimes ill-disciplined troops that provoked him to describe them as the scum of the earth will react.
There is no joined up thinking in government and plans such as this appear so well designed to sow resentment and trouble that it is easy to construct a conspiracy theory that stoking trouble is the very purpose to enable the introduction of more authoritarian legislation and demonise anti-immigrant sentiment so that any sensible objection to the policy can be tarred with the racist far right label.
Wellington also said of his soldiers, “I don’t know what they do to the enemy but by God they frighten me”. Be afraid, Kier, be very afraid.
TwoTier Starmer’s public addresses seemed designed to inflame the situation. He could have calmed things down by acknowledging the concerns of the protesters and addressing them. Instead he deliberately demonized them by calling them far right and invoking the spectre of the long defunct EDL in order to discredit their legitimate concerns, and then basically pledged undying loyalty to the muslim community. This, after 3 very young white girls were slaughtered, a soldier was fighting for his life after a knife attack, a woman walking her dog is murdered, armed police are attacked at an airport (thugs still not charged, the Leeds riots that saw the police run away from a violent mob and yet the lone white woman who was asking the police to do something was arrest (for giving them ice lollies?)….I know I’m missing more, but you get the point. And in London we see several police surround a 70 year old woman with a pacemaker for standing on the pavement, while another lot throw a well dressed older man to the ground again, for standing watching on the pavement. To say that the political class and their minions loathe and despise the working class, doesn’t cover it
If Labour hasn’t significantly reduced both legal and illegal migration in 5 years that will have been the last chance they had.
what evidence is there of Labor wishing to reduce either?
The point is to rub our noses in diversity. We’re going to be culturally enriched by government diktat no matter how many times we vote against it. This is not a democracy.
Far- right as always? I can’t believe the Journalists can not have a clear view for causes and just repeat the main stream media.
What journalists?
The few genuine ones do highlight the problem, the vast majority aren’t journalists but purely paid propagandists.
Will Starmer’s “riot control officers” wear black shirts?
I suggest that every time the Home Office finds accommodation of suitable standard, it is given to someone on the local housing list, while the asylum seeker takes over the newly vacant lodgings.
There will be others already waiting for those to become free.
It is hard to think how a government actively trying to whip up resentment of asylum seekers could come up with something better.
When can we consider that the point is to whip up resentment, a new front of division to go with all the others? People have complained about immigration for years; they have asked, begged, and pleaded for govt to put the brakes on it. And govt’s response is to double down and then call people racists and thugs for pursuing their only remaining avenue.
During the BLM riots in the US, one media outlet after another trotted out an old MLK quote about rioting being the language of the unheard. King was against rioting and saw it as counter-productive, but he also understood that people who are ignored and neglected will get attention somehow.
Meantime Rachel Reeves is trying to sell Britain as a stable place for inward investment!
Happily, the government knows how we *ought*to feel. This guarantees instant acceptance.
….and if we don’t feel that way at first, we can go back and have another attempt at it.
People are angry “that a local business and community asset has been bought out by the state, and that their communities are being used for storage by the Home Office”
Perfectly expressed. Thank you.
Well this globalist is moving quickly. Amping up cctv ( camera on every corner) and now coming to outbid you on a property near you. Council bought a house from under us last year – government money is soft and easy
I have always said that Labour would be a mass of oxymorons based on their “manifesto”. I have now concluded that they are simply a mass of morons. They are like PPE wonks who play politics. They haven’t got a bloody clue how to strategise, operationalise, or effective leadership. There are several steps to playout yet (increase in illegal immigration numbers, asylum seekers in random HMOs in local streets up and down the country hardening views on illegal immigration, close monitoring of police/state for 2 tier examples which will be brought forward for public scrutiny, next murder by a muslim (which rules of probability say will happen) seeing approximately 10% of the British public on the steets based on YouGov figures just released, etc) but I personally believe we become France. Semi-balkanised with informally controlled areas by ethnicity, regular flair ups between ethnic groups, loss of government authority (viz Macron). Hopefully I am entirely wrong, but since I suspect Labour are going to get the denouement as badly wrong as the midpoint, I don’t see an alternative. Top talent in the UK doesn’t go into politics anymore and it shows. In fact, sadly more and more top UK talent is leaving. Enough of this moroseness. Tomorrow is another day ….
Dispersal of asylum seekers has been done before. In 1999/2000 the Blair government contracted NGOs (The Refugee Council/Refugee action etc.) to provide asylum support in the regions. They contracted housing providers (Private landlords, Housing Associations & Local Authorities) to meet accommodation needs. Sodhexo was contracted to run a voucher scheme whereby asylum seekers received benefit in non fungible vouchers that could only be spent in specified stores. An awful lot of NGOs, landlords and corporates were greatly enriched by the scheme and many small companies, usually accommodation brokers, were established on the back of it.
What’s happening with my comments? My account indicates a comment but when I check it there’s nothing.
The one above seems to have appeared ok.
They’ve all been sent to Starmer’s Gestapo. Expect a knock on the door asap.
I work in homeless services in London and there are already refugees and those who have got Leave to Remain status sleeping on streets, in parks and anywhere else they can find. There is a direct link between unsustainable Immigration, the housing crisis and homelessness.
The huge number of illegals take up hotel spaces, take up cheap rentals, and take up the knife sales in rural areas. Illegals need to be stopped at the coast. Do not let them land.
In rural Cornwall we have a housing crisis. This had already been exacerbated by government policy of moving people from cities to rural areas. This left locals unable to secure social housing.
Now we hear about this government wanting to distribute illegal immigrants throughout the country.
People no longer have a say in this country, which our political class want to give away. They then wonder why there is trouble.
Most ordinary folk want a peaceful integrated country. They also expect government to handle illegal activities including illegal immigration.
They clearly are not interested in dealing with the immigration problem.
It’s not as if the British Government doesn’t have any experience in dealing with large influxes of refugees. After all, it banged up about 200,000 Vietnamese Boat People in unairconditioned tin sheds and old ferries in Hong Kong for long enough.