Opinion: A mess made by a Tory government

There are no prizes for guessing from whom this phrase will come.

You may also recall our current Conservative MP started back last year desperate to create Labour as the ‘bogeyman’ . He is now suggesting that Labour’s plan is to refill the Great Northern Hotel, and many other hotels, with asylum seekers.

Let’s be clear here. The Great Northern is a mess made by his party. It was a Conservative decision to take over the hotel without telling the council, using taxpayers’ money to cover up their own mess.

The Conservative Government spends £8 million a day on hotels such as the Great Northern.

This government will have spent more than a £1million of Peterborough’s money keeping the Great Northern Hotel in use. This is the local cost to us of their failure.

My colleague, Dr Shabina Qayyum, a respected GP in the city, takes up the story: “Despite Labour opposing the decision to use the Great Northern Hotel, I provided medical support once people were here. Not only did the government move people into the Great Northern without consulting the council, they also didn’t provide sufficient help for services after they arrived.”

“I worked with the Afghan Community Association to provide medical check-ups to over 120 people at the Verve and Great Northern Hotels. Those original migrants had moved on by October last year. “

Labour is opposed to the use of hotel accommodation to cover up for the immigration backlogs built up by the government. Locally, we have called out the Conservative’s failure on the Great Northern, whilst supporting charities for people who are living in our city. But the decision leaves big questions for Peterborough’s current MP’s government to answer: Why did they lose control of asylum policy and need to start using the Great Northern Hotel? Rather than blame Labour, will he apologise to the people of Peterborough for the way they have managed the issue?

In March last year, there were 395 asylum hotels. Even when they close 50, all situated in marginal Conservative constituencies so the sitting MPs can embark on this kind of ‘electioneering’, there will still be more than there were at the start of 2022 - 207 hotels.

Does that look like success to you?

We need a serious plan to end the government’s wasteful spending on hotels, dealing with the criminal smuggler gangs and return people who have no right to be here. Labour will: Hire over 1000 new caseworkers, recruited at a higher grade than recent Home Office recruitment, to get through cases efficiently, unlike the recent efforts of James Cleverly to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic to hide the real numbers. Labour will create a returns unit to triage and fast-track removals of those such as failed asylum seekers with no right to be in the UK.

Once again, an early year example of the shape of things to come from an MP desperate to cling on to his job whilst hiding his party’s own record on asylum, the cost of living and the NHS.