By Sue Lukes
Over 100 local councillors from several parties have written an open letter to the Government to demand that local authorities be allocated sufficient funding in the upcoming budget to provide adequate asylum accommodation, rather than outsourcing it to private companies.
The initiative is coordinated by the new Migrant Champions Network. There is still time for your councillor to sign it: the deadline is January 27th.
Please send your councillor this link as soon as possible! https://forms.office.com/e/W32AeDmt7Z
This week saw the exposure of the appalling failure to protect children in these hotels, with news that over 200 of them have gone missing while in the ‘care’ of the Home Office and their contractors. The councillors say:
“Our communities tell us that they want to provide a warm welcome for their new neighbours, and show this in many ways. But the choices that central government makes about asylum accommodation means they cannot.
“The Home Office too often looks for short-term fixes, and spends taxpayer money on unaccountable private companies that are outsourced to provide this essential service. As a result, the accommodation is often severely sub-standard, insanitary and temporary, and people seeking sanctuary are often moved from place to place at a moment’s notice, seemingly at the whim of for-profit companies accountable only to their shareholders.
“Meanwhile, councils are left to deal with the consequences of this, often with no extra resources at all… Local councils have the knowledge and the will to provide better solutions, ones which build good community relations rather than stoking mistrust. To do this we need adequate funding.”
The Migrant Champions Network is a new project that supports local councillors to champion the rights of migrants in their local areas and beyond. The network will support councillors from across the political spectrum, and throughout the UK, to advocate for migrants’ rights, to support practical actions for migrants locally and to resist the hostile environment within their local areas and beyond. It is launching on 23rd February: to sign up and get more information go to https://www.jcwi.org.uk/event/migrant-champions-network-launch-event
Sue Lukes helped set up the Migrant Champions Network and is a member of Islington North CLP
Image: Migrants welcome here GJN banner. Author: Global Justice Now, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
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