Sir Gavin Williamson has lamented the Government for their “utter disregard and total contempt” for the people of Staffordshire, after it was announced that the Roman Way Hotel on Watling Street, A5 will once again house asylum seekers.
Sir Gavin campaigned tirelessly earlier this year to ensure that both the Roman Way Hotel and the Hatherton Hotel in Penkridge would no longer be used to accommodate asylum-seekers. However, the Labour Government has confirmed it will be used for this purpose once more from Friday, 15th November.
Labour claims the decision was made due to “challenges across the system” but the lack of a credible deterrent following the scrapping of the Rwanda scheme, is creating unnecessary additional capacity on the whole system.
The Government also add that hotels to be used as asylum-seeker accommodation is needed to clear “tens of thousands of cases in the asylum-backlog.” But independent statistics show the previous Conservative Government cleared the legacy asylum backlog in 2023 by processing 112,138 cases – thus saving the taxpayer millions of pounds on expensive hotel costs.
Sir Gavin said: “Labour has demonstrated utter disregard and total contempt for my constituents, and I understand the anger and total frustration shared by residents who will be impacted by these plans.
“Hotels are not suitable places for asylum seekers as they reduce the offering of places for people to stay – therefore, affecting local tourism which subsequently has a direct impact on the local economy.
“Let me be clear: Labour has absolutely no plan whatsoever to tackle immigration, and will continue to use poor excuse after poor excuse to the detriment of communities. They simply take the easy option and write cheques the country cannot afford to pay.
“I will continue to do everything possible to ensure the practice of using hotels for asylum-seeker accommodation ends once and for all.”
