A scathing report has revealed that the Government drove up the cost of housing migrants in hotels as a result of different schemes within the Home Office competing against each other for the same contract.
The Independent Commission for Aid Impact made the revelation in its UK aid funding for refugees in the UK review.
It assessed UK aid spent on supporting refugees and asylum seekers within the UK between 2015 and 2022.
In its findings, the watchdog said that soaring costs have had “a severely negative impact on the UK’s aid budget”.
The report said the Home Office is “not effectively tracking value for money achieved from its commercial suppliers".
PA
It also said that the Home Office is “not effectively tracking value for money achieved from its commercial suppliers".
The report added: “Key performance indicators for commercial suppliers are outdated and contract management is not to the standards set by Government for contracts of this magnitude.”
Perhaps most shocking, is the revelation that different schemes within the Home Office were found to be competing against each other for the same hotel contracts which in turn lead to prices increasing.
It wrote: “The competition between schemes is also poor value for money. We heard from several stakeholders, including within Government, that different parts of the Home Office operating different schemes source their accommodation separately and, at times, found themselves competing for the same hotel contracts, driving prices up.”
Chief Commissioner at the Independent Commission for Aid Impact, Dr Tamsyn Barton
GB News
It is not made clear in the review how much money could have been saved if the various schemes had worked together.
Reflecting on the findings, Chief Commissioner at the Independent Commission for Aid Impact, Dr Tamsyn Barton, told GB News: “You’ve got so many different schemes, you’ve got different bits of Government desperate to secure accommodation.
“They were in a very difficult situation, particularly when you suddenly had large numbers [of migrants] coming from Afghanistan.
“Now, I think the situation has stabilised, so they’ve told us, so that is less of a problem than before.
“But, they should really rationalise and coordinate between the schemes better.”
Reacting in the House of Commons, Labour MP Yvette Cooper slammed the Government for its handling of the ongoing migrant crisis.
Addressing the Minister of State, Robert Jenrick, Cooper accused the Government of creating a “mess” and “flailing around in a panic”.
She said: “We need to end costly and inappropriate hotel use, but these plans don't do that.
Yvette Cooper accused the Government of "flailing around" in panic.
Parliament TV
“The minister’s had to admit, contrary to all of the briefing in the papers this morning, they won't end hotel use. Instead, these sites are additional and ministers should have been finding cheaper sites and properly managing costs years ago.
“Today's damning report from the Government's own independent watchdog, which strangely the minister did not mention today, says there's been no cost control that the Home Office contracts.
“Highly inefficient, no cross Government transparency and oversight. Officials didn't have financial information on the contracts they were signing, didn't compare costs.”
She went on to quote the findings of the review, saying it revealed a “totally chaotic” situation.
“Basically, they've written a whole load of checks in a panic. If they had put that money into clearing the backlog instead, we wouldn't be in this mess now.”
Jenrick accused Labour of having no proposals to fix the migrants crisis and said they had “no clue”.
GB News
Jenrick responded by accusing Labour of having no proposals to fix the migrants crisis and said they had “no clue”.
He told Cooper: “Labour don’t have the faintest clue how to tackle this issue. They have absolutely no plan.
“What we’ve laid out today is three months of intense work which is seeing the backlog coming down.
“The Labour Party are too weak to take the kind of tough decisions that we are taking today. And in their weakness they would make the United Kingdom a magnet, there would be open doors, an open cheque book, and there would be open season for abuse.”