Labour considering using military barracks to house asylum seekers

Defence Secretary John Healey has told Sky News the government is considering using military barracks to house asylum seekers, as an estimated 1,000 people arrived in the UK on small boats on Saturday.

“We are looking at the potential use of military and non-military sites for temporary accommodation for the people who come across on these small boats that may not have a right to be here,” he told Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips.

“I’m looking really hard at it. I’m looking at it with the Home Office, and I recognise that the loss of confidence of the public over recent years in Britain’s ability to control its borders needs to be satisfied. And we have to deal with this problem with the small boats,” Mr Healey added.

Politics latest: Labour considers housing migrants on military sites

The measure follows widespread protests this summer over housing migrants in hotels.

Fresh small boat arrivals were spotted on Sunday, after an estimated 1,000 people arrived on Saturday – when French authorities said 24 people were rescued while trying to cross the Channel.

The figures compare to a relatively recent lull in crossings. In the previous seven days (30 August to 5 September) the Home Office recorded no small boat arrivals.

Zia Yusuf, head of policy at Reform UK, told Trevor Phillips that Britain has become a “soft touch” on migration, before suggesting between 15 and 25 detention sites will need to be built to detain asylum seekers. He described these as “purpose-built modular steel structures”.

“We can look around the world at where things have worked and worked well. President Trump stood up 3,000 detention beds in eight days. That was this year in the state of Florida – using steel modular structures,” Mr Yusuf said.

He added that the president’s crackdown has significantly reduced illegal border crossings and suggested the same could happen in the English Channel to deter migrants.

“These are unarmed, largely men in dinghies, we don’t need a particularly formidable military to be able to take them to a detention centre,” he said.

Shabana Mahmood will have the job of tackling illegal immigration after taking over from Yvette Cooper as home secretary on Friday – when Sir Keir Starmer carried out a major cabinet reshuffle following the resignation of his deputy prime minister Angela Rayner.

National Crime Agency (NCA) figures show record levels of disruption of immigration crime networks in 2024/25.

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Officials believe this contributed to the lowest number of boats crossing the Channel in August since 2019.

But, despite the 3,567 arrivals in August being the lowest since 2021, when looking across the whole of 2025, the figure of 29,003 is the highest on record for this point in a year.

Sky’s Political Correspondent Liz Bates said that after Labour scrapped the previous government’s controversial Rwanda policy and shut down the Bibby Stockholm barge, ministers are “hitting up against many of the same problems” with “a really broken and very slow asylum system”.

“The context to all of this is a huge shake-up at the Home Office, and I think something of an admission that [Yvette] Cooper, despite her years of experience, could not get a grip… of this problem of people coming across the Channel in small boats and then ending up in asylum hotels,” she added.

Army bases were previously used by the Conservative government, but this prompted local protests, and the sites were widely criticised for their poor conditions in some cases.

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As Sky’s Home Editor Jason Farrell writes, Ms Mahmood has become the home secretary of a country where the national flag is being hoisted as a symbol of dissatisfaction – with anger at the arrival of desperate migrants crossing the Channel in small boats.

Sir Keir’s sweeping changes

Sir Keir Starmer has announced sweeping changes to his ministerial team in the Home Office as his government works to get a grip of illegal migration to the UK.

Here’s a list of who has been moved, besides the home secretary.

Dame Angela Eagle, who was border security and asylum minister, has been moved to the environment department.

Dame Diana Johnson, who was policing and crime minister, has been moved to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

She has said in a post on X that it was an “honour” to work with police officers, and she is “delighted” to be moving to the DWP.

Dan Jarvis has been given a role in the Cabinet Office, in addition to his post as security minister in the Home Office.

And Sarah Jones, who was industry minister, has been moved to the Home Office.