Labour’s migrant housing deal is an insult to left-behind Britain

The small-boats emergency on the English south coast is showing no signs of subsiding. As of this week, 10,000 illegal migrants have arrived in the UK in 2025 so far – the earliest point in a year this milestone has been reached since records began. Keir Starmer’s promise to ‘smash the gangs’ that smuggle migrants into Britain has never looked so laughable.

If anything, Labour is subsidising the gangs’ business model. At the weekend, the Home Office launched a campaign encouraging private-sector landlords to offer their properties to English Channel migrants, with the British taxpayer picking up the tab for rent and utilities for five years. As part of the policy, Serco – one of three private contractors working for the government – is also offering landlords free property management and free council tax bills, as well as covering full repair and maintenance work.

Serco published a list of local authorities that would be covered by the scheme, although this was removed from the web following a social-media backlash (Labour outright denies it is a map of planned asylum accommodation). Predictably, the list includes some of the most deprived parts of Britain.

Indeed, one of the towns earmarked for this plan is Knowsley in Merseyside, which in February 2023 experienced violent disorder outside a four-star hotel that was being used to house migrants and asylum seekers. Knowsley is the very definition of a ‘left behind’ town, with among the worst levels of school attainment and highest proportion of residents who describe themselves as disabled in England. Another town on Serco’s list is Blackpool, a once lively seaside resort that now suffers from squalid housing, food poverty and relatively low life expectancy.

Relocating a disproportionate number of migrants and asylum seekers to some of the most disadvantaged parts of the country is almost the definition of social injustice. It has also been happening for far too long. Back in April 2017, it was revealed that 57 per cent of asylum seekers were placed in the poorest third of Britain. A 2023 analysis by the Telegraph found that so-called Red Wall areas have, on average, 15 asylum seekers per 10,000 of the population compared with two per 10,000 in the south-east of England.

The Labour government may well say that the landlord recruitment drive will free up hotels where migrants have been rehomed at great expense. Rental costs are also lower in more deprived areas. But these are places where the competition for resources is already intense. Public services, already at breaking point, will be put under further strain. Finding a home to rent will become more difficult for locals, given all the financial incentives to landlords to do a deal with the likes of Serco. All this is a recipe for increased social tensions.

The relationship in Britain between the state and its citizens could not be more broken. Labour is essentially using the hard-earned tax money of British workers, many of whom are renters just about getting by in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, to provide free, guaranteed accommodation to illegal migrants, many of whom are not even legitimate asylum seekers in the first place. The poorest parts of the country will bear the biggest burden. What’s more, in the process, the British state has created the strongest pull factor imaginable for would-be Channel migrants to enter the UK with the help of people smugglers.

When it comes to illegal migration, the Labour government remains all at sea.

Rakib Ehsan is the author of Beyond Grievance: What the Left Gets Wrong about Ethnic Minorities, which is available to order on Amazon.