Labour would use barges to house asylum seekers for a ‘very short’ period while the backlog is tackled, the shadow immigration minister has said.
Stephen Kinnock said former military bases would also continue to be used for a period of possibly around six months during work to bring down claims delays from a record high.
Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper has previously indicated she would not be able to immediately shut down the sites but declined to be explicit about the policy.
Yesterday, Mr Kinnock told BBC Breakfast: ‘The reality is that we’ve got tens of thousands of people in hotels, we need to get them out of hotels and we need to get them off the barges and out of the military camps too.
Mr Kinnock said he cannot give a specific timeline as ministers work to bring down the decisions backlog from a record high of more than 172,000 cases.
