Charities plead with the PM to axe housing refugees in hotels

Over 100 charities have written to Rishi Sunak urging him to stop housing child asylum seekers in hotels after around 200 went missing.

British Immigration Minister, Robert Jenrick, said on Tuesday an estimated 200 asylum-seeking children, who is a person under the age of 18 that has become separated from their parents whilst travelling out of their country, have gone missing since July 2021.

Mr Jenrick said: ‘Out of the 4,600 accompanied children that have been accommodated at hotels since July 2021, there have been 440 missing occurrences’.

Out of the 440 missing child asylum seekers that were reported as lost in 2021, the Mr Jenrick claimed only half have returned. He said 13 of those who were missing were under 16 and one was female.

Speaking on this extremely concerning matter, charities have warned the Prime Minister that children, who are housed in hotels, remain at risk of exploitation. Enver Solomon, Chief Executive of the Refugee Council, labelled the situation a ‘child protection scandal’.

Commons leader Penny Mordaunt said there had been ‘stories of gangmasters turning up at hotels’ and ‘taking people away’. It is ‘very hard’ to protect vulnerable asylum seekers and it needs to be addressed, she told MPs.

In the year leading to September 2022, more than 3,000 child refugee applicants were granted some form of protection and by law, all UK authorities are responsible for child asylum seekers, but they can transfer children to other areas when capacity is stretched.

Local authorities receive up to £143 per night to accommodate each child and the Home Office says some children are in hotels because alternative accommodation is unavailable.

Various charities have condemned the government’s failure to protect vulnerable children and an open letter, co-ordinated by children’s rights organisation ECPAT UK and the Refugee Council, has obtained more than 100 signatures – including ones from NSPCC and Barnado’s.

The letter reads: ‘There is no legal basis for placing children in Home Office hotel accommodation, and almost two years into the operation of the scheme – which is both unlawful and harmful – it is no longer possible to justify the use of hotels being temporary’.

Charities also criticised the Home Office for ‘repeatedly failing’ to set an end date for the scheme. In response to this, Mr Jenrick claimed that a shortage of accommodation meant that he could not set an end date.

According to government research from 2020 highlights that over the past three years refugees have been severely neglected. Prior to the pandemic these types of accommodation were used by private housing contractors as ‘initial accommodation’ for up to four weeks until people were moved into ‘dispersal’ housing – longer-term housing that is managed by providers on behalf of the Home Office.

However, by the end of 2021, the Refugee Council found more than 26,000 asylum seekers were living in hotels – some had been there for a year.

Photo by Eric Masur and Chris Boese