Blanket amnesty suggestion to solve migrant hotel crisis

Refugee Council calls for targeted, ‘one-off’ reprieve scheme

- HOLLY BANCROFT

Sir Keir Starmer could end the use of controversial migrant hotels within the next six months if he offered a blanket amnesty to asylum seekers from a handful of countries, it has been claimed.

The Refugee Council says ministers would be able to stop relying on the hotels by March next year by offering a one-off temporary reprieve for thousands of migrants from nations with high grant rates, such as Afghanistan, Syria and Iran.

Home Office figures show asylum applications from Sudan have a 94 per cent approval rate, while grant rates for Syrians have been as high as 98 per cent in recent years. Yet thousands from these countries are put in hotels for months on end, unable to work or study, while their applications are reviewed.

Labour has vowed to end reliance on hotels by 2029, but has been under pressure to close them earlier after a string of anti-migrant protests across the country. The demonstrations started outside the Bell Hotel in Epping, which the High Court ruled last week was no longer allowed to house asylum seekers following the violence. The Court of Appeal is due to hear a legal challenge to that ruling today.

The Refugee Council said such a move would be following in the footsteps of the 1997 Labour government, which between 1999 and 2000 allowed nearly 30,000 grants of exceptional leave as part of a plan to deal with a growing backlog of asylum claims. Applicants who claimed asylum before 1 July 1993 were also automatically granted a reprieve unless there were public interest grounds not to, or their removal had already begun, the brief published today explained.

However, Jack Straw, who was home secretary at the time, told