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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....<<<Read More>>>...
