The UK’s borders watchdog has said he does not think the Government’s plan to end the use of asylum hotels by the next election will be achieved.
David Bolt told a committee of peers that there is not enough housing stock to deal with the number of people in the asylum system, as he also questioned the “ability to smash the gangs”.
Downing Street rejected his comments about housing.
The independent chief inspector of borders and immigration was quizzed by the Justice and Home Affairs Committee on Tuesday about his work scrutinising the Home Office functions.
Mr Bolt’s comments come after Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced the Government’s commitment to end using hotels for accommodating asylum seekers by the end of this Parliament as part of the spending review.
Asked what the challenges would be to achieve that, Mr Bolt replied: “I don’t think it will be achieved, frankly.”
In his recent inspection looking at asylum decision making and quality of the decisions, the inspector said there’s been a “significant increase” in the number of refusals, which has in turn led to an increase in the number of appeals over the last year.
“And so the numbers within asylum system (are) not very tractable, they’re very large numbers and it’s very hard to see how they’re going to be reduced significantly even over the length of Parliament.”
He added despite the Home Office appearing to be going in a different direction with getting more local authorities engaged in asylum housing: “I think there’s a more fundamental issue about accommodation, or at least housing stock, there simply isn’t sufficient housing stock to be able to deal with the sorts of numbers in the system.
“I think it’s really, really challenging.”
A No 10 spokesman said he did not accept that there would be a lack of housing stock.
“I don’t accept that. As I say the government is committed to restoring grip to the asylum system, allowing us to end the use of hotels,” he said.
Mr Bolt, who previously served borders watchdog between 2015 and 2021, and returned as interim chief inspector in June last year, also told peers he wrote to ministers to say he “wasn’t convinced smashing the gangs was the right way of thinking about things” in tackling Channel crossings.
He said: “It did seem to me the challenge was to change the risk reward ratio for those people involved in organised immigration crime, that’s really a difficult thing to achieve, because it’s relatively low cost, relatively low risk for the perpetrators and highly profitable.
“I’m not sure I feel very optimistic about the ability to smash the gangs and, in any event, it seems to me with organised crime, the best thing you can do is deflect it to something else you’re less concerned about rather than expect to eradicate it.”
He added that he believed the establishment of the Border Security Command has brought energy and focus to the issue, and it has been agreed with Border Security Commander Martin Hewitt for the unit to be inspected later this year.
But he also agreed more needed to be done to tackle the issue in the UK and look at what is attracting people to come to the country.
Mr Bolt said: “The availability of illegal working, that I think is one of the issues the Home Office has tried to focus on and tried to close down as best it can and will continue to have to work very hard on that.”
It comes as an investigation by The Sun newspaper reported that Channel migrants are working as fast food delivery riders within hours of arriving in the UK.
Shadow home secretary Chris Philp also posted a message on X on Tuesday saying he made an unannounced visit to an asylum hotel last Friday and found “clear evidence” of illegal working for Deliveroo, Just Eat and Uber Eats.
A Downing Street spokesman said border security minister Dame Angela Eagle will meet food delivery companies next week, adding that the Government will not stand for the “racket”.
Meanwhile, Mr Bolt added in a report on small boat crossings he carried out in 2018 that the problem was “obviously going to get significantly worse”.
“I take no pleasure from this,” he said.
“It does seem to me there was an opportunity maybe back then to do something; now is much much more difficult.”
Home Office figures show just 299 migrants made the journey to the UK by crossing the English Channel in 2018.
This year so far, more than 18,000 migrants have arrived via the Channel, in a record for this point in the year since data collection began in 2018.
The highest year of total arrivals on record was 2022, at 45,774.
