Immediate closure of asylum hotels could lead to migrants ‘living destitute in the streets’, says minister – UK politics live

Stephen Kinnock warns ‘disorderly discharge’ could lead to worse consequences that current situation

The immediate closure of asylum hotels could lead to migrants “living destitute in the streets”, a government minister said, as he warned against a “disorderly discharge”.

Health minister Stephen Kinnock told Sky News:

It’s not a question of if we close the hotels, it’s a question of when and how we close the hotels, and what we don’t want to have is a disorderly discharge from every hotel in the country, which would actually have far worse consequences than what we currently have, in terms of the impact that would have on asylum seekers potentially living destitute in the streets.

And I don’t think any one of the communities that are campaigning on these hotels issue want to see that.

We’ve got a whole range of options – disused warehouses, disused office blocks, disused military barracks.

We are looking at every option that we have to manage the discharge, and it’s really important that we do that and put those plans in place, but of course, it’s going to be much more effective if we’re able to do that in a way where we’re controlling the discharge from these hotels.

The Foreign Office in London summoned Russia’s ambassador to the UK, Andrey Kelin, at 1pm, in direct response to the severe damage inflicted on the British Council building in Ukraine, government sources said. The prime minister, Keir Starmer, condemned the attacks as “senseless” and accused Russia of “sabotaging hopes of peace”.

Rachel Reeves should levy a new bank tax and urge the Bank of England to halt bond sales to reduce the government’s £22bn-a-year losses from quantitative easing, the IPPR thinktank has argued. In a report called Fixing the Leak, the IPPR’s associate director for economic policy, Carsten Jung, says the Treasury should rein in the costs of QE as public finances are tight.

England needs to “wake up” to its faltering infant vaccination programme, experts have warned, as it was revealed that one in five children start primary school unprotected from serious infectious diseases. The government has urged parents to make sure their children are up to date with their vaccines.

The Reform party’s promise to abolish policies on equality and diversity is “ludicrous” and threatens to take policing and society backwards, one of the country’s most senior chief constables has said. Serena Kennedy retires on Sunday as the chief constable of Merseyside police, after a tumultuous four years in charge. She criticised politicians including the Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, for making questionable statements at times of heightened tension, such as immediately after last summer’s Southport riot.

A member of the House of Lords asked a senior British diplomat to help a Ghanaian goldmining venture in which he held shares, claiming it was “in the UK national interest”, the Guardian can disclose. The revelation will add to concerns about apparent breaches of parliamentary lobbying rules by Richard Dannatt, a former head of the British army. The peer is already under scrutiny over his lobbying for several companies, leading in two cases to investigations by the Lords’ standards body.