Labour would keep housing asylum seekers on barges if elected, shadow minister admits

The Labour Party has said it would have “no choice” but to continue housing asylum seekers on barges and ex-military bases if it forms the next government.

Shadow immigration minister Stephen Kinnock said Labour would “inherit a mess” if it wins the next election and that it would have to “deal with the infrastructure that we have”.

Speaking to Sky News, Mr Kinnock said Labour would try to move asylum seekers out of hotels, barges and military camps as “quickly as possible”.

But he added: “The reality is, on day one of a Labour government, we have to deal with the infrastructure that we have in the complete, chaotic, shambolic mess that the Conservative government will have left us.”

Pressed on whether that meant Labour would still use barges, he said: “We will be left with no choice but to deal with the mess that we inherit.”

The shadow minister said he was “personally deeply unhappy” at the prospect, adding: “This is the last thing that we would want to be doing because we believe that people who are applying for asylum should be an appropriate accommodation.

“The hotels are costing the British taxpayer £6m a day – that is money that could be channelled into far more useful causes in terms of our schools, our hospitals, helping to grow our economy.”

Mr Kinnock’s admission comes as the two parties trade blows over the small boat crisis in the Channel and as the first asylum seekers prepare to arrive on the controversial Bibby Stockholm barge in Dorset on Monday, following a series of delays.

It marks a change in tone from what Labour has previously said about using barges to house asylum seekers.

The shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, has previously indicated she would not be able to immediately shut down the sites but has declined to be explicit about what Labour would do.

In a ramping up of attacks against Labour over the small boats crisis, Home Secretary Suella Braveman accused Sir Keir Starmer of trying to “sabotage” the government’s plans with its links to charities and lawyers who oppose the scheme to send asylum seekers to Rwanda – a policy that is currently held up in the courts.

She told the Sunday Express the Labour leader was “secretly delighted at his web of cronies’ schemes to block our plans to stop the boats”.

“He’s in this for political point scoring and doesn’t care about what’s good for the country or the British people,” she said.

Writing in the Sun on Sunday, immigration minister Robert Jenrick also accused Labour of using “every trick and tactic to delay and prevent us from removing people with no right to remain in the UK”.

“And as they do so, they put two fingers up to the law-abiding majority who suffer from illegal migration,” he wrote.

The government has also announced that Facebook, TikTok and X will team up with UK law enforcement to crack down on posts by people smugglers encouraging migrants to cross the English Channel.

Rishi Sunak, who has made cutting the number of small boats arriving on UK shores one of his “five pledges”, said the new partnerships with various social media companies will tackle attempts to “lure” people into paying to make the perilous journey.

Group discounts, free spaces for children and offers of false documents are among the posts the prime minister wants removed to help achieve his promise to “stop the boats”.

In response, Mr Kinnock welcomed the development but said it was “too little too late” and the government was “about two years behind the curve”.

In a separate allegation, Labour has also accused the government of “cooking the books” on the asylum backlog by “artificially removing” people from it to give the illusion of progress.

“If somebody misses one appointment, they’re immediately classified as withdrawn,” Mr Kinnock said. “It doesn’t mean that they’ve been processed either.

“It just puts people into limbo and effectively then people are just slipping into the underground economy. The government’s got no idea where they are and what they’re doing, and that is the opposite of the right way to run our asylum system.”

A Home Office spokesperson said the government was “on track to clearing the ‘legacy’ asylum backlog”

“The latest figures show it has been reduced by a nearly a third since the start of December, down over 28,000, and we have 40% more asylum decision-makers in post compared to the start of December 2022,” they added.

“Our efforts to streamline processing mean statistics now show an increase in the number of withdrawn claims, which occur for a number of reasons including where someone has already left the UK before their claim was considered or they choose to or pursue another application for permission to stay.”