The government, which is currently led by Prime Minister Keir Starmer, claims that the migrant sites they are currently using are overwhelming local services. These include the former military sites of RAF Scampton and RAF Wethersfield, along with the Bibby Stockholm barge. However, their new plan seems like it will just spread the pressure across even more local services.
The UK Labour Party is now negotiating with municipal councils to determine how many migrants they can send to each location. They have also enlisted contractors for the UK’s Home Office to find sites they can use, such as former elderly care facilities and student apartments. They are also reportedly looking for landlords who currently have empty single-family homes available.
In addition, they are considering the use of hotels due to soaring rental prices in the UK. The National Audit Office asserted that using larger sites could cost tens of millions of pounds more than hotels. They are also looking to process the tens of thousands of migrants currently in limbo faster to bring down the backlog and reduce the need for larger sites.
One Labour Party source told The Times of London anonymously that they felt it was a positive move, noting: “It’s all about having a more equitable dispersal of asylum seekers. Otherwise you have these areas that have concentrated numbers and that is what we got in areas with hotels and large sites. That creates a whole host of challenges, meaning services in those areas are then stretched and those asylum seekers can’t get the basic or crucial support they need.”
The Deputy Leader of Reform UK, Richard Tice, posted on X that the Starmer administration is “putting illegal migrants ahead of British citizens in [the] housing queue under Operation Scatter.” He added that “Labour [officials] don’t care about [the] British working class.”
A spokesperson for Starmer has already reported that Labour plans to let more than 100,000 migrants apply for asylum in the UK, while new Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner promised that every borough in the UK will have to take its “fair share” of asylum seekers.
Former Tory MP Alex Stafford called the plan to scatter asylum seekers “an absolutely bonkers scheme.” “We know councils are facing huge pressures on the housing ladder and social housing. All this is going to do is flood the country with tens of thousands of people who are going to be put up in social housing, which will push up rents,” he said.
Migrants have been a hot-button issue in the UK recently, with angry citizens rioting after three children were fatally stabbed by a man with a migrant background while attending a Taylor Swift-themed dance class. A further nine children were wounded in the attack, which was carried out by the 17-year-old son of two migrants from Rwanda.
Some locals heckled Starmer when he tried to leave flowers at the site of the brutal murders, with one asking him “How many more children, Prime Minister?”
Sources for this article include: