Labour minister defends plans to house migrants in ex-military bases after 'public desire' to close hotels

The Home Office has confirmed that almost 1,000 asylum seekers will be housed on former military bases from November.

900 migrants will be moved into the Cameron Barracks in Inverness and Crowborough Training Camp in East Sussex.

Defending the plan, Mr Pollard told GB News: "What we've done is we've listened to communities from across the country who are expressing quite rightly concern around the number of asylum hotels in their communities.

"The Prime Minister has made the commitment to close all asylum hotels by the end of this Parliament, but we want to do it faster, and he has asked all Government departments to step up, and the Ministry of Defence is stepping up."

He added: "We're supporting our Home Office colleagues in looking at what are the bases that we have that we're not using for military purposes today, that can be used to accelerate the closure of asylum hotels, as well as helping the Home Office keep the focus on processing applications faster.

"Twenty four per cent of that backlog we inherited is already gone, but we know there's a lot more to do, and I think the MoD can and is stepping up to support that whole of Government."

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Pressed on the plans further, host Eamonn Holmes argued that the Government is "not supporting the local communities" and that people are not "going to stand and put bunting in the streets and outstretched arms and say, 'welcome, migrants come and take over our whole environment!'"

The Labour minister responded: "I don't think that's actually what the experience of when these bases will be used will look like, but we do recognise that there's been significant concern.

"I know GB News have been reporting it right throughout the summer of people being worried about having asylum hotels in their communities, and we're trying to process the applications."

Interjecting Mr Pollard, Eamonn hit back: "People don't like it. There's no point saying you're closing down hotels and that'll solve the problem, because it won't."

Mr Pollard said: "What we're doing is we're responding to the very genuine public desire to see all asylum hotels closed, and we agree with that.

"The Prime Minister has asked all Government departments to step up, to see how we can speed up the closure of those hotels. I think that's the right thing to do.

"We're looking at what bases we can provide in support of that, and an announcement will come from the Home Office very shortly about which bases we can support officially."

He concluded: "But to do this, we not only need to close the asylum hotels, we need to speed up the processing.

"That's why we've hired hundreds of extra caseworkers to deal with the backlog. It's now been cut by 24 per cent.

"We have already closed two dozen asylum hotels, saving £1billion, but we want every single one of them to close."