Save our kids. Save our kids. Save our
kids.
>> Stay clear.
>> Refugees are welcome here.
>> Those were protests outside the Bell
Hotel in Eping in Essex, which was
housing asylum seekers. But a judge said
those protests were part of the reason
he was shutting that hotel down and
saying it was no longer going to house
those asylum seekers. What does this
mean for the government's policy on
housing them and for politics in
general? we'll discuss in this episode
of the BBC's daily news podcast
newscast.
Well, we can catch up with home and
legal affairs Dominic Kashani who was
reporting on this court case on Tuesday.
Hi, Dom.
>> Hi. Hi, Adam.
>> And also in the normal newscast studio
is political correspondent Joe Pike. Hi,
Joe.
>> Hello, Adam.
>> Right, Dominic, let's start off with
just doing a bit of kind of deep reading
of this this this temporary rule. What
do we call it actually technically
>> um is interim relief which basically
>> interim relief?
>> Yeah. An injunction to stop something
happening which is in place until
everybody comes back to court to really
argue out whether the thing which should
be stopped should really be stopped.
>> Yeah. A reminder we're in the middle of
this story rather than the end of it. So
um what did the judge actually say? Why
why did he rule that actually those
asylum seekers should not be in the
bell?
>> Well, I mean, look, yesterday, Adam, was
was one of the strangest days I've had
in court for a long time. I mean, on one
level, because it was about planning
law, which um isn't what mere mortals uh
like uh like me are used to dealing with
and it's probably why planning lawyers
have paid an absolute arm and a leg.
It's really complex stuff. Um but
secondly because we had this bizarre
situation where the home secretary's
lawyers tried to intervene at the last
moment because they were worried about
the implications of the judgment and uh
the the uh the judge Mr. Justice there
wasn't having any of that. He said well
you could have done all of this last
week you could have intervened then and
then he came
>> this was a case between Eping the local
authority and the private company that
that puts the asylum seekers in the
hotel.
>> Precisely. Precisely. and the the home
secretary had been put on notice that
the case was going ahead, but uh no
lawyers were available, which I think
his code for they may have all been on
the door last week. But the um things
things got even more surreal when the
judge then came back into court to
actually deliver his his his ruling and
said to the court, "Well, I've delivered
my ruling." Um except he delivered it by
email to the parties in the course and
everybody on the press press bench was
sitting there saying, "Yeah, but what is
it?" And They carried on the hearing
about what happens next and we had to
effectively uh interpret from how people
were reacting who had won and who had
lost which is a slightly odd situation
bit slight existential angst for a court
reporter not to be able to say what a
judge has actually said because we
actually hadn't seen the copy of it but
when we did see a copy of it yeah very
weird
>> when when we did see a copy of it
>> what we saw was a very nuanced ruling
which um really really um hammers home
Eping Forest's case that they have real
concerns about what's going on in their
local in their local area. But, you
know, it's a real headache for the home
office. Now, it's not a nightmare. The
court didn't say all asylum hotels must
now be emptied um uh from next week, but
it did basically set criteria which
other councils may use. Now, the key
thing in this is to go back a little
bit. Can I go back to 2022 briefly? I I
won't do the Wikipedia version. Yeah.
So, in 2022,
a bunch of councils that year tried to
get injunctions and largely failed to
stop the home office and its contractors
using hotels in their areas. And there
was one particular case involving
Ipsswitch and Hull where those two
councils challenged the use of hotels in
their areas. And what the court said at
the time was, look, there's there's no
evidence of harm so far. And critically,
the court had to take into account the
wider public interest, which includes
the home secretary's duty to house
people to house asylum seekers. That's a
duty imposed on the home secretary by
parliament. So, in fact, the the court
said, "Well, what what do you what do
you expect us to do? The home
secretary's got to put people places.
They've run out of accommodation. These
hotels are are available. Crack on." And
that in many respects seemed to be the
end of it other than a few outlier
decisions. Great Yarmama for instance
won the case because the hotel being
selected in that town was on the
seafront and part of its tourism uh
space. So they won theirs but that was a
pretty unusual one. What made a
difference today though was how things
have panned out over the last month in
Eping itself. So we've had the Bell
Hotel, we've had the protests. Some of
those protests have become unlawful.
There have been clashes with the police
and all of this in planning terms
impacted the uh the enjoyment of the
area uh and the character of the area
for people who live there. Now what the
judge said is is that um he wasn't
interested that there had been lawful
protest. That's you you have to tolerate
lawful protest. That's the price of
living in a free society. and the threat
of a protest per se cannot operate as
some kind of veto preventing the home
office and its contractors from carrying
out some other public purpose in the
public interest. But what he did say was
because Eping had an arguable case that
the hotel was in breach of planning
rules in effect it ceased to be a hotel.
It was some kind of hostel on one level.
Um, that's an arguable point which will
have to come back to court in October
because that was the council's argument
that there had been an unlawful breach
and that in turn had led to these really
really quite concerning protests. The
judge said he was entitled to take that
risk of irreparable harm to the local
area into account and therefore issue
this stop order telling the hotel owners
to effectively well he gave them till
the 12th of September Adam to remove
everybody and that means the home office
has got to find other places to put
them. So the consequence of that is a
clear ruling linking the idea of um an
alleged unlawful act by the hotel with
the consequences of that being local
disturbances, fear of crime, a changing
of a sense of place. And those two
things together, the real question is
whether or not that's now going to open
the gateway for other councils to try
and do the same thing as Epen Forest.
>> Yeah. Yeah, Dominic, I'm glad you said
all that because when I first read the
reports about this on Tuesday, I
thought, "Oh, this has been this has
been kaibosed because of the planning
regulations and I thought it's because
this hotel was actually being used as a
hostel, which the law sees differently
from a hotel." And I thought, "Oh,
actually, it's nothing really to do with
the protests at all." But then once you
read the judgment and you read a bit
more around it and you talk to people
like you, you hear, "No, no, the
protests actually were quite a big
factor in in the judge interpreting how
planning law is meant to work." So
actually, it's not that there's planning
law over here and protests over there.
The two actually have kind of have
merged in in a way in this story. So
Joe, let's talk about some of the the
political consequences. I mean, first of
all, um, what what's the Home Office
doing about about housing the people
that can't be housed in the Bell Hotel
anymore? Do we know?
>> Uh, we don't. They say they are
considering what to do next, but a
minister from that department who was
touring the TV and radio studios this
morning couldn't provide much clarity.
Certainly from conversations I've had
from people who work in the home office
so far suggests that they are pretty uh
disappointed, frustrated, weary.
Certainly, I've been on duty over the
summer uh covering politics and that is
the department I've been on the phone to
most often on topics like prescribing
Palestine action on small boats on this
one out France deal on hotel protest and
now I don't they've almost got a sort of
extra legal curveball added into the the
mix. Uh certainly I'm told I vet Cooper
had this on her radar about a week ago
and immediately realized the
implications the precedent that could
potentially uh be set. Of course that
that's as Dom explained why Home Office
lawyers tried to get uh involved and now
we're also seeing other political uh
parties getting in on the action and
putting their views as to what should
happen next. in particular low in other
communities across England where there
are hotels housing migrants.
>> Well, yeah, let's go through the
political parties or some of them then.
Um, what are reforms saying about it
because this is this is prime political
territory for them. They are framing it,
Adam, as as a victory. I spoke to Zia
Ysef earlier today who used to be the
chairman of the party now runs this Doge
operation for Nigel Farage. he delivered
really I suppose it was a sort of
rallying call for people to uh protest
outside hotels in their communities but
but protest uh peacefully. He also said
that reformrun councils will be studying
uh what has happened in Eping and taking
legal advice. There are 12 reform
councils. Only a very small portion of
them have planning and housing powers.
though they can't all um get involved
here, but one of those uh councils, West
Northamptonshire, has three hotels in
its area and they've told us they are uh
looking at what they uh can do. So
reform partly because as Dom has
explained the protest being part of the
judge's consideration are now
encouraging further protests in an
effort to try and close down more
hotels. And yeah, Dom, it's I mean it's
impossible to predict what happens in
other court cases, but what does this
one tell us or pointers does this one
give us about when yeah, places like
West Northamptonshire try and do this
for their area?
>> I think I think there are a number of
layers to this. So I think the first
question for many councils who may be
tempted to go down this route and it's a
very expensive and difficult route for
them to land um is so one of the first
things is have they exhausted all local
remedies? So, one of the issues um in
other cases, so let's take uh South
Norolk Council for instance, they're
saying they're not going to go to the
courts and they're going to try to
enforce local planning rules before
going down the injunction route because
they think that's going to be of more
success. And and one of the issues in
this case was why why had the council um
not actually taken any enforcement
action in Eping Forest in a in in a
manner that they may have been expected
to do so. So there are complications
around this which make the Eping issue
fact specific. I think the issue about
the protests though. Um this is a really
interesting one really because what the
what the home officers lawyers said
yesterday is if the interim injunction
is granted it could act as an impetus
for further protests and those protests
could be unlawful.
And so the question is is at what level
and at what kind of size of protest
outside an asylum hotel does suddenly
that reach a tipping point where a local
authority may want to go to court and
try and get an injunction in a similar
way to Epin Forest and can and and I
think there's obviously political risk
around this as well. So if you think
about the fact that uh Nigel Farage has
is has said you know people should come
out and and in his words lawfully
protest what happens if those lawful
protests get hijacked by criminal
elements um politically that could
become quite awkward for for any him or
anyone else who's actually backing such
process in the hope of putting pressure.
Yeah. So it's very difficult this I
think long term though. Yeah. I think
there's a really interesting point about
where where the government is really
heading on asylum accommodation per se.
You know, hotels were never part of the
equation until the backlog exploded,
partly because of uh uh poor decision-m
in the home office after 2018, but also
because of the pandemic. One of the
things the Labor government has hung on
to is a site near Brainree, which is a
converted military site, and it seems to
be expanding it to hold um to
accommodate more asylum seekers. Now
that's taking the British government
closer to the German model. And the
Germans have long uh they've long
organized big reception centers,
self-contained, all the facilities
there, healthcare, uh educational, the
rest of this, integration, all those
kind of things, self-contained, so
you're not putting people in local
communities. 20 odd years ago, Tony
Blair's government were tempted to go
down that route and they never felt they
had the political capital to actually
make it work. And I'm just wondering
whether we're going to end up with Karma
thinking
I've got a lot of poor options here, but
this is the least worst one. And maybe
that's where we're going to end up. And
slowly over the course of the
parliament, if the numbers don't start
coming down, they'll move to that model
because the Germans have shown they can
make it work.
>> And Joe, the pressure on the government
here because Iette Cooper had said we'll
stop using asylum hotels by the end of
this parliament. But that sounds like
that's too far away for a lot of people
now.
>> Absolutely. Although that Cooper's team
say they are sticking to that commitment
and it is achievable, but clearly people
are frustrated. The opinion polls and
the fact that immigration is uh reaching
the top according to a lot of pulses of
of concerns of voters is a big part of
that. And this is a this is clearly a
partly a political debate as well. The
fact we've seen opposition parties at
least on the right wanting to get in
front of TV cameras today shows how
salient the issue is. We've talked about
reform, but the conservatives have also
been out talking. Chris Phelp, who's the
shadow home secretary, saying that
people who have moved out of the bell,
and we think around 140 men are
currently being housed there, they
should now be housed, he says, on barges
or military bases. He wants the
government to commit to not using any
hotels or flats or HMOs. He wants
illegal migrants to be
>> houses of multiple occupancies. So
basically like collections of bed sits.
>> Exactly. He wants illegal migrants
supported on arrival and he also wants
an emergency cabinet meeting. We should
also point out um Mr. Phelp who's pretty
prominent at the moment uh and on the
airwaves a lot was border security
minister for for a couple of years under
Boris Johnson.
>> Yeah. Yeah, and it is a tricky one for
the Tories cuz they're trying to stop
their supporters and their voters
flocking to reform who are quite
hardline on this. But equally, they were
they were in government for a long time
and actually the peak of the number of
people in hotels while they were waiting
for their asylum claims to be processed
was under the Conservative government.
It was it reduced towards the end of
their their time in office. I was
actually in Eping last week with Kem
Benedok on a trip there which didn't get
much coverage but I think was in
intended for her to find facts about
what was happening on the ground but
also quite carefully enter uh the debate
and the space that has been so um
falsely occupied by reform on asylum
hotels. And it was interesting Adam on
that very point to see the reception she
got. Yeah, there were a lot of people
who received her well and wanted
selfies, but there were others who were
slightly hostile and on a number of
different fronts. And one of them was uh
saying to her that the conservatives in
their 14 years in power have cut back
local services including uh police and
so it is difficult for her to articulate
many of those um arguments too
forcefully. The other thing I should say
about my time in Eping is even though
there were a lot of people who were
clearly very frustrated about uh the
effect of that asylum hotel, its impact
they argued on public safety, there were
other people I spoke to who argued it
was the protest themselves which have
caused the problems and were far more
sympathetic to the people who are housed
at the bell. And also Joe, just paint a
bit of a picture of of what the Bell
Hotel was like. And I don't mean as the
site of protest and counterprotest, but
as a place where people were being
housed while their asylum claims were
processed. What could you tell from from
the outside?
>> Well, it is not a hotel like we'd know
it in the sense that well, I suppose in
the sense that you don't pay for it,
right? It has 80 rooms, mostly double
occupancy. So 138 people is the maximum
people that can be housed there. Now,
>> so it's people sharing rooms with other
people they don't know.
>> You don't get to choose your room or who
your roommate is. You need to sign in
every day to to mark that you are there.
And if you're away for more than a day,
you need to let the home office uh know
that. And it is all men, all single men.
This isn't somewhere where where
families are housed. But it was uh
various arrests linked to the hotel
which seemed to spark, at least
according to the judge, uh the unrest.
And this uh hotel on the edge of Eping
had been not in a great place certainly
pre- pandemic. It was according to its
owners making a loss during COVID. It
was used to house homeless people
including some asylum seekers. And
actually for 18 months under the the
Conservatives, it was an asylum hotel.
It then closed down and reopened in
April of this year. And Dominic, it was
interesting listening to our colleague
Daniel Samford on the radio earlier on
today, who's been covering home affairs
for a long time as well. And he said the
main thing he got whenever he went to
these facilities or these hotels or
these hosts, whatever you want to call
it, is the sense of boredom because the
people in them um cuz they're asylum
seekers under the law, they're not
allowed to work. They get some money
from the state to live on, but it's not
a huge amount. And also it's not like
it's not like being in a a health spa or
or a center parks where there's loads of
activities to do. And he just said the
sense you get is just boredom.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Look, I' I've met plenty of
asylum seekers down the years in in
various uh places they've been
accommodated and it is mind-numbingly
boring, not least because they can't
work. And and and that bar is in place
to prevent um illegal working and
effectively people trying to use the
asylum uh route as a means of getting
into the into the British economy. Um I
mean, in terms of cash, I mean, good
fact to put out there. If an asylum
seeker is in some of the home office's
privately rented accommodation, which is
typically basically a family where the
home office system effectively provides
them a very very cheap house in
typically in the poorest areas of uh of
some of the poorest towns in the
country, um they get 50 £4918
per person a week to spend on
everything. Um, if you're in a hotel
where your meals have been provided, you
get £9.95.
So, these are way way below the levels
of of of benefits which people who are
legally residents in the UK um are
entitled to. It's it's very very little
money and they do literally sit around
for months and months and months waiting
for a decision. So, it is it is quite a
quite a sort of like chronically boring
thing. But you see this then brings us
back to the fundamental issue about why
hotels are being used. People are
sitting around for ages waiting for a
decision because the backlogs have grown
and grown and grown because the home
office became exceptionally poor at
dealing with cases and processing people
to a point where they were either
allowed to settle as genuine refugees
and therefore allowed to work and pay
their way or were told they were going
to be removed. I mean 2014 in 2014
um nine out of 10 of cases uh were dealt
with in under six months and by around
2022
that dropped to just six out of 100. It
was a staggering drop and that's why the
backlog's grown and that's why people
are sitting around.
>> Yeah, cuz I did an episode of Antisocial
on Radio 4 about this last week and you
can listen to that on BBC Sounds if
you'd like to hear it and I mean it got
really really heated. is in fact one of
the most heated episodes we've done like
all year. Um but for me the penny really
dropped when I was doing that episode
and you realize the sort of the three
structural things that are combining
here. Number one what you just said Dom
the asylum system at the moment is so
slow and there are loads of reasons and
causes for that but the main thing is
it's just really slow. The second thing
is governments are obliged to provide
asylum seekers with accommodation. So
you can't just have people sleeping in
the streets because actually that's what
happens in France and that's why you
have these big camps. And then thirdly,
this accommodation isn't provided by the
government. It's privatized. It's three
big companies that are meant to be
providing accommodation on behalf of the
government so they can meet their legal
objective of housing people who are in
the asylum system for sometimes a lot of
years. And then actually I said there
was three things. There's then a fourth
thing that one of the experts we spoke
to said. He said, "Look, you want to be
careful here because the rate of
granting of asylum means that more than
half of the people that are in the
system end up staying in Britain because
they're granted asylum and get refugee
status. And do you really want to be
having a situation where people have
been cooped up in really not very nice
accommodation, being demonized by some
protesters, and having done nothing and
been really bored for two years? if
actually that person is going to become
sort of quai British at the end of the
process and stay here forever.
>> There's there is an interesting
comparison here with Spain and some
parts of France actually in fairness to
the French. They they do have another
model which is um which is particularly
focused around families where they are
accommodated during the application
process as refugees in residences which
very often kind of resemble student
halls or student flats if you see what I
mean. And the idea of that model and and
these places are run by charities and
NOS's is to try to get those people give
them a better chance of integrating
during the process. So there are French
lessons um you know to get the kids into
school those kind of things and
supporters of that system say it works
because it's dealing with small numbers
of people in in in communities and
helping them very very quickly kind of
start to move on. The difficulty with
our system and we're we're in a pretty
unusual situation is is in effect we're
putting people into accommodation around
the country in a national dispersal
system be it uh privately rented digs or
hotels but there's not a lot of support
around those people. Uh and that's where
very often a lot of the tension starts
building. These people have got nothing
to do. They go outside. They mill around
outside because they're not being held
as prisoners. local people are wondering
who these guys are who are hanging
around particularly of these young male
men. You I was talking to the leader of
Eping Forest Council yesterday, Chris
Chris Whitbread, and he he describes his
town as a lovely town, a happy town, a
friendly town. And all of a sudden,
everyone's kind of mystified about who
these young men are, where have they
come from. And that kind of changing of
a sense of place really plays into
people's trust in the state and
political parties. and you know
inevitably for some tips over from you
know legitimate debate and protest into
what what we've seen with some of the
clashes in Epic Forest and and elsewhere
on occasion.
>> Um and Joe just before you go on a
completely different note you were
saying that you spend all summer phoning
the home office but in the last few days
have you found yourself calling the
Treasury because there's so many ideas
for how how to reform property taxes in
the budget in in the autumn popping up
in newspapers every day. There's a lot
there's a lot of Treasury stuff in
there. Absolutely. And my understanding
of the inner workings of the Treasury at
the moment is that especially in August,
some of them are resting, relaxing,
trying to escape uh London and work for
a bit, but others are hunkering down
trying to work out strategy tactics for
what to do next because various economic
think tanks have been pretty blunt about
the uh the sort of hole in the in the
public finances, the gap that Rachel
Reeves needs to fill. But I'm told once
Parliament's back in September, I think
we're likely to see a lot more of uh the
chancellor and maybe more details on on
different things uh she intends to do
ahead of the budget.
>> Yeah. Yeah, and sorry, me and Joe were
sounding a little bit cryptic there, but
some of the ideas that have been floated
in the papers in the last few days, and
they're all around property taxes are
things like do you abolish stamp duty,
so what you pay when you buy a property
over a certain value, and do you replace
that with a sort of annual property tax
where you pay a little bit on the basis
of the value of your property every year
rather than a huge chunk on the basis of
the value of your property upfront when
you buy it. And then the one that was in
some of the papers today on Wednesday as
we're recording this episode of Newscast
is that you get rid of the exemption for
paying capital gains tax on your main
home for properties above a certain
value. So that gives you a little bit of
an idea of the the sort of things we're
having to phone the Treasury to ask them
to confirm or deny which they neither
confirm or deny about.
>> Capital gains mansion tax is what it's
been called.
>> Cats catchy.
>> Very catchy.
>> Capital gains mansion tax. Um Joe, thank
you very much. Thanks, Adam and Dominic.
Thank you very much to you, too.
>> Thank you, Adam. Cheers.
>> And that's all we've got time to show
you on Newscast, but we recorded so much
more than that, and you can hear it in
the podcast edition of Newscast, which
is available to download now on BBC
Sounds. And we'll be back with another
episode very soon. Bye-bye.