Asylum Seekers Accommodation and Safeguarding

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 3:36 pm on 7 November 2022.

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Photo of Paul Maynard Paul Maynard Conservative, Blackpool North and Cleveleys 3:36, 7 November 2022

The Home Office is accommodating 400 asylum seekers in the Metropole Hotel in the centre of Blackpool in my constituency. It lies in Claremont, the fourth most deprived ward in the country—an area with a host of social problems and a difficult history of child sexual exploitation. Those problems were pointed out by me and the council when the hotel was first commissioned by the Home Office. Those issues have not changed, and dispersal from the hotel has been slow. I welcome the fact that the Minister is going to exit the strategy of using hotels, but will he make sure that the Metropole is the first hotel that he exits?