A Labour councillor in Epping Forest has admitted the government will face a “significant challenge” to rehouse migrants following the High Court ruling.
Speaking on GB News Cllr Martin Morris said:
“If we look just at Epping Forest, this success with obtaining a temporary injunction is a great thing for Epping Forest and for Epping itself. The unrest around the use of the Bell Hotel for asylum seekers has been very significant here.
“We’ve had large demonstrations outside the hotel. There’s been a significant level of local concern. And this judgment really is a first step towards Epping Forest District Council being able to manage this situation.
“Up until now it’s been largely left with the Home Office, who have had the power to decide where asylum seekers are housed. But now EFDC has shown that this isn’t necessarily the case.
“I’m not in favour of using hotels to house asylum seekers. I don’t think they’re appropriate and I think the government agrees with me. It’s part of their policy that the use of hotels is eliminated.
“However, the government has had a longer time frame in mind when it thought about this problem, and the possibility that this legal action will be replicated across the country is going to represent a significant challenge.
“Instead of being able to remove the use of hotels over a period of a number of years, it may have to be accelerated and I don’t think there’s an easy answer to that.
“I don’t think the government has any easy ways of housing [them]. There are about 30,000 people in 200 hotels at the moment, and it’s going to be very difficult to rehouse people if a large number of hotels are taken out of the system.
“I think, although it’s a great success for Epping, if we look at the country as a whole, it’s going to make things much more difficult.
“Personally, I think it will the better if the government stuck to its guns of taking more time to manage the transition properly by reducing the number of people who arrive here, by eliminating a lot of the activity of the people who manage the crossings of the channel, and also speeding up the process of hearing and deciding asylum claims.
“If that all is to take place, then the number of people who need accommodation will reduce. However, that is obviously going to take time. What’s happening now is going to accelerate things.
“I think if there was an easy answer of how to stem the flow of asylum seekers coming across The Channel, successive governments over the past 10 or 15 years would have found it. But it’s quite clear from that that there isn’t an easy answer.
“I think the Labour Government has realistic and achievable policies on this, but it will take time.
“I’ll reiterate, this is not an easy problem to solve, and there will be no government over the past decade or so who has found a way of solving it. We’ve seen many things tried; Rwanda, wave machines and so on. None of this has really had an impact on the flow.
“I think that the Labour Party will have its work cut out to find a way of reducing immigrants. But there isn’t an easy answer, whatever other politicians may say.”
