Opinion: 'Let's keep looking out for our neighbours in Falkirk', Euan Stainbank MP
The end of 2025 follows months of division rooted in the legacy of the asylum policy of the previous Government. Hotels were never appropriate accommodation for often traumatised and vulnerable people fleeing persecution, nor were they acceptable to our community when it was imposed without consultation by the previous Government.
The UK, and every other nation in the world that abides by the Refugee Convention, has a moral obligation to protect those fleeing persecution. The majority shelter in neighbouring countries, and a minority end up moving across countries and continents.
That system in the UK is under strain because of bad contracts signed off by a bad government, not because people fleeing war are bad people. The system has failed to move people from claim to resolution quickly enough and failed to support contribution, instead leaving people languishing for years in hotels.
Labour is ending the use of asylum hotels altogether. In one year, the rate of processing asylum applications has more than doubled, substantially reducing the backlog and enabling half of all asylum hotels – from their peak in 2023 under the Tories – to close already. That is the start of fixing the system.
The Borders Act came into force this month, permanently replacing the policy agenda that directly led to this crisis. It brings common-sense measures excluding the small minority of asylum seekers who commit serious violent offences from ever obtaining the prospect of refugee status, while enabling the necessary action and resources to process applications so that eligible asylum seekers can be given the status they need to fully participate in our society far quicker.
The Government will also introduce safe, legal and capped routes to end the humanitarian disaster of small boat crossings and will be consulting on further measures. I am pressing relentlessly in Westminster with ministers to ensure that the evident failure of the Tories’ hotel policy is ended in Falkirk swiftly and effectively as soon as possible.
Recent media coverage has not shown our town in the light we want. Anyone who harms women should face the full force of our fair justice system. But I know Falkirk, I know that most people here – regardless of our politics, those from here or those who have made their home here – are fundamentally decent. It is the responsibility of those in leadership to promote unity, not fuel division.
We should not give in to lazy political vandals like Nigel Farage, who arrived on a fleeting visit seeking to use heightened tensions to antagonise religious, ethnic or cultural minorities and target children for their opportunistic rhetoric because of the languages they or their parents speak.
Falkirk will endure into 2026 by looking out for our neighbours, refusing to tolerate violence against women and girls, and rejecting the collective assigning of blame for horrific acts to entire minority populations. I will keep working relentlessly to fight for a better economic and social settlement in my hometown, which has been too little for too long.