Up to 80,000 more Channel migrants could reach the UK this year, according to Home Office projections. On Friday, Rishi Sunak will meet French president Emmanuel Macron at a summit in Paris to agree on an expanded, longer-term deal to devote more officers, surveillance equipment and infrastructure to stop the migrants from leaving the northern France beaches. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt confirmed his backing earlier in the week and is understood to have privately told Mrs Braverman that “money is no issue” in stopping the boats, one of Mr Sunak’s five priority policies ahead of the election. Measures in the Illegal Migration Bill are expected to cost £3 billion a year. The Bill will have its second reading in the Commons on Monday. On Tuesday, Home Secretary Mrs Braverman unveiled the Government’s Illegal Migration Bill to detain Channel migrants, remove them from the UK within weeks to either their home country or a safe third country like Rwanda and ban them from ever returning. It also comes following a wave of protests targeting hotels housing asylum seekers, as tensions build in communities. ![]() There have been fraught discussions between the Home Office and Treasury officials in recent weeks about the ballooning cost of hotel accommodation ahead of next week’s Budget. Mr Sunak will on Friday meet with President Macron at the Elysee Palace in Paris for the first Anglo-French summit in five years, with the Prime Minister reportedly set to give sums totalling more than £200 million over a three-year period as part of a strategy to stop the boats at source.Ī senior Whitehall source familiar with discussions said: “The Treasury has been frustrated that the Home Office is placing migrants in expensive hotels and has pushed them to look at cheaper alternatives.” The news comes as the Prime Minister is set to announce that Britain will give hundreds of millions of pounds in funding to France to invest in policing, security and intelligence to prevent the small boats crisis. The Treasury has now agreed a package of efficiency cuts within the department and money from its own reserve to cover the £2 billion overspend on migrant hotels, although the agreement is unlikely to be a prominent part of next week’s budget. Treasury figures have been pushing for the Home Office to scale back the use of “expensive” hotels while Suella Braverman's department wanted more money to plug the black hole in its budget. It has prompted fears among MPs that tens of thousands of migrants will still be housed in hotels across the country by the next election, widely expected to be in 2024. ![]() The number of migrants being housed in hotels has passed 50,000 for the first time, up from just 2,600 in March 2020, at a cost of more than £6 million a day.Īnalysis by the Telegraph shows there are now asylum hotels in 90 per cent of England’s 48 counties. ![]() The Home Office has had to find an extra £2 billion to fund hotel rooms for asylum seekers, as the Government admitted there is no deadline to end their use.
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