A watchdog says the Home Office is in “crisis mode” in its handling of illegal immigrants and refugees, with soaring costs and the number of hotels used to home immigrants doubling within six months.
The Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI) quoted stakeholders as saying the UK government department was now using a “blank cheque” to finance rising housing costs in “poor value for money” hotels where some women and girls are subjected to harassment and even forced marriages.
The highly critical insight was carried out by ICAI investigators who not only spoke with government officials and contractors but also refugees and illegal immigrants.
Between October 2022 and March this year, the number of hotels used by the Home Office to house illegal immigrants almost doubled from around 200 to 386.
The ICAI said it had heard “a lot of anecdotal” evidence of safeguarding lapses in immigrant hotels, particularly for women and girls, who face significant risks including gender-based violence.
‘Blank Cheque’
According to the ICAI, a “critical shortage” of affordable social accommodation across the UK has led to the Home Office placing illegal immigrants into hotels.On average, the department spends £120 per person, per day, to house immigrants in almost 400 hotels. This compares to an average price of just £18 per person, per day, in longer stay accommodation such flats or housing.
“The Home Office has been operating in crisis mode for an extended period, reacting to day-to-day challenges of finding accommodation for asylum seekers and refugees but not allocating the planning efforts and resources necessary to exit the cycle of emergency fixes and spiralling costs,” the report states.
“In October 2022 the Home Office told us it used around 200 hotels for asylum seeker accommodation and 64 hotels for Afghan refugees at a total cost of £6.8 million every day.”
By March 14, 2023, the Home Office informed ICAI the number of hotels used for illegal immigrants had increased to 386.
The Home Office’s spending on accommodation and basic sustenance for illegal immigrants is a statutory obligation and not subject to any budget restrictions, the report reveals.
According to the ICAI, the department is not required to factor in the impact of that expenditure on the rest of the aid programme or on people expected to benefit from UK aid in developing countries, it said.
Many stakeholders interviewed noted the risk of perverse incentives, with one expert describing it as a “blank cheque” for the Home Office, the ICAI reported.
While the Home Office has recently started planning long-term solutions, the short-term nature of its response to date has contributed to the spiralling costs, the ICAI said.
This has been “exacerbated by a large and growing backlog in processing asylum claims,” which results in many more people entering Home Office-provided accommodation than leaving, and longer stays in hotel accommodation for newly arrived immigrants.
Forced Marriages
The report also highlighted safeguarding risks in hotel accommodation, particularly for women and children.Gender-based violence, harassment, and lack of safety in the hotels was brought up in focus group discussions carried out by the ICAI.
“We heard at every site visit (apart from at a men-only hotel) about problems with safeguarding, as well as issues around identifying and reporting it,” the report stated.
Incidents reported at hotels have gone up from 2,000 to 6,000 a month since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic when prolonged hotel stays began, according to Home Office figures included in the report.
At hotels for resettled Afghans, the ICAI heard of forced marriages as well as women “not leaving their hotel rooms at all.”
“Many women in focus groups mentioned they did not feel safe or did not feel they were heard,” it said.
While the asylum system is not within the ICAI’s scrutiny remit, the watchdog said it was clear that measures to speed up processing could help reduce emergency accommodation costs, lessening the disruption to the aid programme.
The Home Office engages private contractors to provide accommodation and services for illegal immigrants.
The ICAI assessed how these high-value contracts were managed and found that the Home Office did not effectively oversee the value for money of the services.
It has recently developed trackers to monitor and compare the cost effectiveness of different suppliers, but the key performance indicators that are being monitored are, overall, not appropriate for the task of ensuring that the right outcomes are being reached and that value for money is achieved, the report states.
Under international aid rules, the first year costs of supporting refugees in a donor country can qualify as official development assistance.
The ICAI said while the rule has always been considered controversial, it has become particularly “problematic” in recent years—partially as a result of the large-scale visa schemes for refugees from Ukraine and Afghanistan as well as the upsurge in Channel crossings.
As a result, it estimates that core expenditure on in-donor refugee costs was around £3.5 billion in 2022, accounting for around a third of the UK’s total aid spend that year.
With the overseas aid budget limited to 0.5 percent of GDP, the ICAI said the UK’s ability to respond to international humanitarian emergencies has been “sharply curtailed” as the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) has been forced to pause “non-essential” spending.
“This was seen in the limited UK response both to devastating floods in Pakistan in August 2022, and to the worsening drought in the Horn of Africa, which is expected to lead to widespread famine in 2023,” it said.
The findings were backed by the chair of the Commons International Development Committee, Sarah Champion, who called on the FCDO to defend the aid budget from “profligate” Home Office spending.
“This review confirms that our valuable aid budget is being squandered as a result of Home Office failure to get on top of asylum application backlogs and keep control of the costs of asylum accommodation and support contracts,” she said.
“It is time for the UK government to get a grip on Home Office spending of the aid budget so that we can return to the real spirit of aid spending—spending that should promote and target the economic development and welfare of developing countries.”
