Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Conclusion 19
Seventy-Sixth Report - The Asylum Transformation Programme
Published 27 Oct 2023
Addressed to HM Treasury
Public Accounts Committee The Asylum Transformation Programme All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Conclusion (the committee's words)
The Home Office explained that, as a way to limit the number of hotels it is using, it will accommodate more people in each hotel by increasing the amount of room-sharing.55 It told us that it had so far increased the number of beds available in hotels by a number “in the high hundreds” through room sharing, and that its providers were working with hotels so that more room sharing could be implemented.56 The Home Office told us that it was confident this could provide “several thousand” more beds.57 However, it said that it pays its providers by bed rather than per room and was very vague about how much money the increased room-sharing would save, and promised to come back to us to share the detail.58 The Home Office did write to us on 18 August 2023, but the letter provided little clarity as to how room sharing would result in savings and did not state how much money that the Home Office expects to save.59
From: Public Accounts Committee, Seventy-Sixth Report - The Asylum Transformation Programme (HC 1334), 27 October 2023
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 14 February 2024 (deadline 27 December 2023).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government agrees with the Committee's recommendations on the asylum backlog, the streamlined process and local authority engagement, and disagrees with those on hotels, safeguarding and publishing the Programme Business Case.
- On the backlog, the government agrees with the recommendation, describes it as implemented and says the legacy backlog target has been met; it says flow claims "will be prioritised from 2024 onwards".
- On hotels, it disagrees with the recommendation to set out how and by when it will stop using them, but says it has "plans in place to close over 50 hotels before the end of January 2024" and will keep modelling assumptions "under regular review".
- On local authorities, it agrees, with a target implementation date of "iterative to December 2025", and says pilots with London, Wales and South West England will run between January and March 2024.
- It disagrees with publishing the Programme Business Case, stating that "it is not standard practice" to do so, and offers a private meeting with the Committee once HM Treasury approves it, which it anticipates by "the Summer of 2024".