Truth about migrant hotels: They host tens of thousands of young men and cost billions. Now our investigation raises disturbing questions about exactly who's in them... and why the government is obsessed with keeping them secret: SUE REID
Share:
A few days ago, I rang to book a room at the Mercure Hotel in central Leeds for a weekend next January. The answer was a firm no. ‘We’re not taking bookings from the public,’ said the female receptionist. ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘We are not allowed to reveal that information,’ she replied sternly.
![[The hotels housing migrants are ferociously protected by the Home Office to safeguard the non-paying visitors from interacting with any Britons anxious to discover what on earth is happening on their patch]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/12/19/16/93323413-14210563-image-a-20_1734626233028.jpg)
The receptionist had been silenced by the Home Office, in a scandal that is increasingly irking the British public. The Mercure, like 219 other hotels scattered around the country, is now housing illegal migrants as the asylum system struggles to cope with the sheer volume arriving on our shores.
![[A worried group gather in Manchester to protest against asylum seekers being housed locally]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/12/19/16/93323137-14210563-image-a-17_1734625997427.jpg)
The crisis, and its huge social and economic cost, are bad enough. But some would say it is an outrage that the public is being kept in the dark about which hotels are being used for such controversial guests. A group of males outside one of the 220 hotels currently housing migrants, in November.
![[A request to the Home Office for an independent review of the impact of migrant crime on the UK’s women and girls was made last week by Rupert Lowe, the Reform MP for Great Yarmouth]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/12/19/16/93323875-14210563-image-a-21_1734627028965.jpg)
Today, a Mail investigation reveals that every part of England, from Cornwall to Northumbria, Lincolnshire to the Welsh borders, now plays host to a migrant hotel. Office Christmas parties and wedding receptions booked for next year have been abruptly cancelled. Locals who used the swimming pools, gyms or cocktail bars find they are barred from entering the premises by guards wearing hi-vis jackets, who often speak little English themselves - again on the Government payroll.
![[Sir Gavin Williamson, a former Tory Government minister and MP, asked the Government to regularly update the public how many hotels have been ‘repurposed’ to house asylum seekers since the election]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/12/19/16/93323127-14210563-image-a-18_1734626072476.jpg)
Migrant numbers in the hotels are staggering. The properties are currently housing at least 36,000 (a jump of 21 percent since the July election) at a cost of several billion pounds a year to the taxpayer, according to figures released by the Government under pressure from MPs last month.
![[Peterborough’s Labour MP and councillors have told Dame Angela Eagle, the new minster responsible for border security and asylum, that local hotels are not a suitable migrant base because local services, such as doctors’ surgeries, will be overstretched by the numbers]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/12/19/16/93323115-14210563-image-a-16_1734625801612.jpg)
