Decommissioned cruise ships could be used to house asylum seekers – while the Government expects to spend £3.5bn on people who have come to the UK seeking refuge from persecution this fiscal year, the Home Secretary has said.
Suella Braverman told the Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee that her department was looking at the idea of housing asylum seekers on disused cruise ships.
She suggested officials were in talks with shipping operators, adding: “Everything is still on the table and nothing has been ruled out.”
Ms Braverman also said the Government should spend £3.5bn on housing and supporting those seeking asylum in the 2022/23 financial year.
This includes £2.7bn for accommodation – £2.3bn for hotels and £400m for “other types of accommodation”, Ms Braverman said.
“There is a huge amount of money that goes into accommodating a very large number of asylum seekers,” the home secretary added.
There are currently 117,000 people in the UK asylum system, with 40,000 in hotels, she said.
She described the challenge of meeting the target of housing 100,000 asylum seekers in local authority accommodation instead of hotels as “incredibly difficult”.
There are currently 57,000 asylum seekers in municipal accommodation, she said.
In response to a question about cruise ships, Ms Braverman said: “We want to end the use of hotels as quickly as possible because it is an unacceptable cost to the taxpayer, it is over £5 million a day just for hotel use.
“We will be proposing a range of alternative sites, they will include disused holiday parks, former student halls – I must say we are looking at those sites – I wouldn’t say anything is confirmed yet.
“But we have thousands of places to offer, and when you’re talking about vessels, all I can say is – because we’re in discussion with a wide variety of suppliers – that everything is still on the table and nothing is off the table.”
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There is no airline for deportations in Rwanda
Ms Braverman also suggested to the Lords committee that she was yet to find a new airline to deport migrants to Rwanda – one of the government’s key policies which has proved controversial and faced multiple legal challenges.
She said she had “ongoing discussions with several airlines” after Spanish charter airline Privilege Style pulled out in October following pressure from activists.
A Privilege Style aircraft was used for the first flight in June, but it never took off due to last-minute legal challenges.
Asked if she had since found another airline to fly to Rwanda, Ms Braverman told colleagues on Wednesday: “We are in very ongoing discussions with several airlines.
“We return people almost every week to different countries around the world. We do this through scheduled flights, charter flights… so we are in various discussions with several airlines for many different destinations.”
“Delivery” of the Rwanda deal was “on hold pending as we go through litigation,” she added.
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