Yvette Cooper, thanks to Tuesday’s high court ruling, is facing potentially explosive decisions over where to house asylum seekers if courts rule that they must leave hotels.
The Home Office, usually under Conservative ministers, has been struggling for five years to find an alternative to hotels so they can house a growing number of asylum seekers reaching these shores.
Labour has said that it expects to empty the 200-odd hotels housing asylum seekers by 2029. Ministers may be forced to rip up that plan and move at a rapid pace because of the ruling’s implications.
If councils take to the high court to complain about the use of a hotel for housing asylum seekers – and many will be under immense political pressure from the public to do so – it could force officials to find alternative housing for thousands of people.
Legal sources believe that there will be similar grounds to launch applications for interim injunctions from a number of councils. This case has centred on an alleged breach of planning laws by owners of the Bell hotel, who it was claimed did not get permission to switch use from a hotel to hostel-style accommodation.
Other hotel owners are thought to be in similar positions to Somani Hotels Limited, which originally housed families in the Bell, but faced a legal challenge after the asylum seekers were switched to single men.
Ominously for the government, the Reform UK deputy leader, Richard Tice, said his party would look at pursuing similar cases regarding hotels within the 10 council areas it controls, which include both North and West Northamptonshire councils, Doncaster, and Kent and Staffordshire county councils.
And the high court rulings can require a rapid response. Epping’s application for an interim was launched on 12 August. By 4pm on 12 September, all asylum seekers will have to be removed from the Bell hotel.
There may yet be a lifeline for the government. They could convince the court of appeal to overturn the decision. The fact that the Home Office was not allowed to intervene in a case that was directly related to the home secretary’s duties to house asylum seekers could well be seized upon by government lawyers.
If they fail to overturn the decision, they will face the same dilemma as successive Tory home secretaries going back to Priti Patel, who promised and failed to find alternatives to hotels to house asylum seekers.
The number of asylum hotels soared to 400 under successive Tory home secretaries because of a shortage of housing, a growing backlog in asylum applications, and a failure to establish large accommodation sites in buildings such as disused military barracks.
Since coming to power, Labour has increased the speed at which applications are processed, and used more “dispersal accommodation” such as flats and housing in the community.
Questions will no doubt be asked inside the department as to why it took the Home Office until Monday to try to intervene in the case. If it had done so last week, when the case came to court, it would have stood a better chance of preventing the injunction.
The political implications of the ruling will continue to unsettle Cooper and No 10. The government has been caught flat-footed on an immigration-related issue, as it struggles with soaring numbers of small boats crossing the Channel.
Anti-asylum seeker protesters will see this as a victory in response to their demonstrations across the country this summer. Reform UK and its leader, Nigel Farage, currently leading in most polls, will be buoyed by the prospect of further embarrassment for the government.