Starmer pledges to recoup profits from the asylum hotel companies

PM TO 'CLAW BACK MILLIONS' AFTER MAIL EXPOSÉ

- JANE HAYNES Politics Correspondent

PRIME Minister Keir Starmer has pledged to seek to claw back excess profits made by asylum seeker hotel owners following a Mail exposé.

The PM said some of the billions of surplus gains made by private companies housing asylum seekers needed to be recovered.

He made the commitment to the Mail after we shared with him details of the huge net profits achieved by a hotel in Sutton Coldfield which houses more than 300 people under a contract with private firm Serco on behalf of the Home Office.

The five owners of the former Ramada hotel in Penns Lane, Walmley, had divvied up dividends and fees of more than £5m in three years out of the profits made on the back of the publicly-funded scheme.

There is no suggestion they did anything illegal, but the system that generated such huge profits has been lambasted as "failed, chaotic and expensive" by a cross party committee of MPs.

Starmer told the Mail that officials were working to recoup surplus profits.