Detailed information was revealed by the Refugee Council’s findings, obtained under freedom of information (FOI) laws, reveal that 378 people had been in hotel rooms for a year by the end of December 2021, and almost 3,000 (2,826) for more than six months.
According
to report, the government has been accused of “deflecting its failures” with
its “unworkable” Rwanda plan rather than reducing asylum backlogs as tens of
thousands of asylum seekers continue to languish in hotels.
New data
obtained by the Refugee Council reveals that the number of people seeking
asylum who are living in hotel accommodation almost trebled last year, surging
to 26,380, despite a pledge by the Home Office at the start of 2021 to reduce
the numbers.
Figures
uncovered by The Independent last month revealed that the numbers continued to
increase into 2022, with 28,621 asylum seekers in hotel accommodation by May of
this year.
The number
of families housed in single hotel rooms has increased by nearly a third (27
per cent) in 2021, which includes over 2,500 children (10 per cent of the hotel
population).
This is
despite the government pledging last February to limit the use of hotels to
house people in the asylum system and its promise to move people into
longer-term accommodation within 35 days.
The
department is spending £127 on hotels per asylum seeker each day, and a total
of more than £1.7bn each year, the Home Office previously disclosed.
The report
also highlights cases of people having inadequate access to clothing,
appropriate footwear and other basic essentials such as paracetamol, mobile
phones and internet data.
It
suggests that many of those living in asylum accommodation have limited access
to the vital legal and health services they desperately need while claiming
asylum, and are being cut off from the rest of society and support networks.
One person
the charity is supporting, an Iranian woman referred to as Angel in the report,
has been living with her three children, aged 22, and twins aged 14, in a hotel
since November 2021.
“The
school is quite far away. At the beginning, it was hard for me to make sure
they got there safely. They need to get a bus and walk, it is over half an hour
away,” she said.
“I didn’t
get any financial support at the beginning so when the school sent us the
letter and said they had a space I couldn’t take my children. I went to
reception and said I don’t have any financial support to get my children to
school today. Reception said they couldn’t help.”
Enver
Solomon, chief executive of the Refugee Council, said the impact of this on
people who have already endured suffering was “huge, damaging their mental
health, robbing children of their childhood and leaving people unable to
progress with their lives in any meaningful way”.
He added that the “huge” increase in the number of families and vulnerable children stuck in hotel rooms was the “brutal reality of a broken system”.
“The
government is deflecting its failures with cruel and unworkable policies like
that of the Rwanda scheme, rather than focussing on creating a fair, effective
and humane asylum system which addresses the backlog of people trapped in the
asylum system,” he said.
“The
government must ensure swift decisions are made so that those who have
protection needs can stay in this country as a refugee, and those who do not
can be supported to safely return to the country from which they came.”
It comes
after renewed doubt was cast over the Home Office’s plan to send asylum seekers
to Rwanda when it was revealed that British officials repeatedly told the
government not to strike such a deal with the country.
Documents
presented to a High Court hearing on Tuesday said that Rwanda was “initially
excluded from the shortlist of potential partner countries for [Priti Patel’s]
proposed immigration policy on human rights grounds”.
They
showed that before the plans were announced, the UK High Commissioner to Rwanda
indicated that the country “should not be pursued as an option for the planned
migration policy”.
No comments:
Post a Comment