The Home Office is to introduce new “capped safe and legal” routes for asylum seekers to arrive in the UK later this year, a move home secretary Shabana Mahmood said would restore public confidence in a system that “only survives if the public trusts that it is fair, controlled, and not open to abuse”. Organisations including universities, community groups and businesses will be able to sponsor refugees under a model based on Canada’s asylum system, the department announced as it prepared to put the immigration bill before the Commons. “Britain has always offered sanctuary to those fleeing war and persecution,” Mahmood said. “But this system only survives if the public trusts that it is fair, controlled, and not open to abuse.”
At the same time, the government is pressing ahead with plans to use three more military sites to house thousands of asylum seekers, as it seeks to move people out of hotels. Three Ministry of Defence sites in Bicester in Oxfordshire, Barnham in Suffolk, and Linton-on-Ouse in North Yorkshire could accommodate about 3,750 asylum seekers if planning permission is granted. The government is also looking to extend the use of existing military sites in Crowborough, East Sussex until 2030 and Wethersfield, Essex beyond 2027.
“Home Office introduces capped safe and legal asylum routes and seeks three more military bases to house migrants”
Border security and asylum minister Alex Norris said: “We are moving asylum seekers into ex-military sites that are a far cry from the hotels the last government left us with. This is a system being brought back under control – and we will not stop until the job is done.” But Conservative shadow home secretary Chris Philp said Labour “should be putting illegal immigrants on a plane home rather than messing around with military camps and hotels”, and “will not do what is needed to tear down the barriers to deportation, and without deportation, there is no deterrent”.
Lib Dem MP Callum Miller, whose Bicester and Woodstock constituency includes the MoD site at Bicester, opposed the plan, telling Radio 4’s Today programme: “The question we are looking for the answer to is why the government thinks it is possible to put 1,250 asylum seekers into a community when the nearest village numbers 370… I’ve literally no idea how the government thinks that can be absorbed into the community.”
Labour has pledged to stop using asylum hotels, which have become a focal point for anti-migrant protests. On Thursday, the Home Office said a further 20 asylum hotels had been shut, reducing the number in use to 170. As of March, 20,885 asylum seekers (21%) were in hotels and 72,768 (75%) were in other accommodation. One former hotel, TLK Apartments in Bromley, has now reopened for public bookings after three years, the Evening Standard reported. The Red Cross has said military barracks “are often in isolated locations and, by their very nature…”.
The government did not say how many people would be allowed to arrive under the new capped routes, but said they would start from a low base. Applications for the university route will open later this year, with the first arrivals due in 2027, and a refugee work route is expected to open next year. The Home Office said it would control which organisations could sponsor an asylum seeker, and all applicants would be subject to strict checks. Alongside the new routes, the government is pressing ahead with changes to how human rights and modern slavery laws are applied to asylum applications, which it says will root out “vexatious” claims.