Migrants moved off Bibby Stockholm asylum barge and into cushty hotels | Politics | News

Migrants staying on the Bibby Stockholm asylum barge are being moved to new accommodation in the Midlands, it has emerged.

The Home Office is moving around 400 people to a hotel in Wolverhampton and council accommodation in Worksop.

Officials are considering opening more asylum hotels amid fears they will soon run out of places as the number of small boat arrivals increases.

The Home Office contract for the Bibby Stockholm is due to end in January. Labour has vowed to end the use of the barge and RAF Wethersfield – a former military base.

Former Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick said: “Illegal migration is not a political football. It’s a national security emergency and a source of real anger for millions of Britons.

“Rather than playing politics by sending migrants to punish their opponents, Labour should get on with stopping the boats by strengthening, not scrapping, the Rwanda scheme.”

A Home Office source said: “On July 4, the Tories left Britain in the middle of the worst year ever for small boat arrivals, on track to exceed the total for 2023 before the end of September.

“They also halted most of the asylum decision-making, so thousands of people went into an ever growing backlog, and an expectation that substantially more asylum accommodation would be needed later in the year.

“The Government is acting step by step to get the system back on track, increase border security, end hotel use and re-establish an asylum and immigration system that is properly managed and controlled, so the system is fair.”

The Home Office wants to clear a backlog of more than 120,000 asylum seekers.

More than 60,000 migrants will be granted asylum and allowed to stay in Britain after Sir Keir Starmer scrapped the Rwanda scheme, experts have revealed.

The Refugee Council predicted, based on grant rates in the year to June, that as many as 62,801 people could be recognised as refugees.

The charity said the number of asylum interviews came to a standstill in the month before the General Election.

In June, the Home Office carried out just 1,150 interviews – despite there being four times as many asylum caseworkers.

Before voters went to the polls, there were 118,882 waiting for an asylum decision.

This rose to 125,385 on 16 July 2024.

The Conservatives, under Rishi Sunak, had pinned their hopes of reducing the asylum backlog on deportation flights to Rwanda.

And the previous Government wanted to strike up more deals with countries across the globe to act as a deterrent to migrants crossing the Channel.

But the Rwanda flights were grounded by successive legal challenges

The Refugee Council has predicted the Labour Government’s decision to scrap the Rwanda scheme and end the legal requirement to detain and deport illegal migrants will lead to the backlog starting “to come down in the coming months”.