Ipswich Novotel hotel to stop housing asylum seekers, says MP

A hotel in Ipswich will be among the first to stop housing migrants following a government announcement.

The town centre Novotel has been used by the Home Office to house asylum seekers since October last year.

Immigration minister Robert Jenrick has told MPs 50 hotels will be closed to asylum seekers by January.

Ipswich's Conservative MP Tom Hunt said the Ipswich Novotel would be one of those, and he was pleased the hotel could "be put back to its proper use".

A specific timetable for the 50 hotels was not announced, but Mr Hunt said the Novotel should stop housing refugees "by the end of next month".

In a statement to Parliament, Mr Jenrick said agreements with France and Albania, along with stricter penalties for those connected to illegal migration, had helped reduce the numbers arriving in small boats, enabling the government to start ending the use of asylum hotels.

"These hotels should be assets for their local communities, serving businesses and tourists - not housing illegal migrants at an unsustainable cost to the taxpayer," said Mr Jenrick.

A letter seen by the BBC revealed that the 2022 plan to house migrants at the Ipswich Novotel meant some hotel staff would be replaced by workers brought in by the Home Office.

Mr Hunt said with the latest announcement, he now hoped those who "were pressured to resign should be not only offered their jobs back but ideally on better terms than before".

According to Mr Hunt, refugees housed in the hotel could either be moved to ex-military barracks in Essex, transported to barges, or "depending on what happens with the Supreme Court, some will be eligible for going to Rwanda".

Martin Simmonds, from Suffolk Refugee Support, said: "Hotels have never been used in the past for this purpose. This only came about because of a failure to process people's asylum claims that left people in limbo."

He said he would welcome the closure of hotels for this purpose "if it meant that people were getting fair and quick hearings on their asylum claims and being allowed to move on with their lives".

The Illegal Migration Act became law in July, meaning the home secretary has a legal duty to detain and remove anyone entering the UK illegally.

Mr Hunt confirmed his position on the issue of asylum seekers and other migrants, stating "if you come to the country illegally, under no circumstances should you be able to stay".

"The Illegal Migration Act, which was passed three or four months ago, made it explicitly clear that if you arrive illegally in the UK from a safe European county, ie France, then you won't be eligible for asylum in this country, which I agree with.

"France is a perfectly safe country and I think you should apply for asylum in the first safe country you get to, not break our immigration laws by coming in illegally."

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