Has the government just walked into a giant political elephant trap by attempting to reverse the Epping hotel ruling?
Already on the back foot after a judge ordered the Bell Hotel to be emptied of asylum seekers, the Home Office is now being attacked for trying to appeal that decision.
“The government isn’t listening to the public or to the courts,” said Tory shadow home secretary Chris Philp.
The politics is certainly difficult.
Government sources are alive to that fact, even accusing the Tory-led Epping Council of “playing politics” by launching the legal challenge in the first place.
The fact Labour councils are now also considering claims undermines that somewhat.
After all, the party did promise to shut every asylum hotel by the next election.
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Figures out this week showed an increase in the number of migrants in hotels since the Tories left office.
And now, an attempt to keep people in a hotel that’s become a flashpoint for anger.
That’s why ministers are trying to emphasise that closing the Bell Hotel is a matter of when, not if.
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“We’ve made a commitment that we will close all of the asylum hotels by the end of this parliament, but we need to do that in a managed and ordered way”, said the security minister Dan Jarvis.
The immediate problem for the Home Office is the same one that caused hotels to be used in the first place.
There are vanishingly few accommodation options.
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Labour has moved away from using old military sites.
That’s despite one RAF base in Essex – which Sir Keir Starmer had promised to close – seeing an increase in the number of migrants being housed.
Back in June, the immigration minister told MPs that medium-sized sites like disused tower blocks, old teacher training colleges or redundant student accommodation could all be used.
Until 2023, regular residential accommodation was relied on.
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But getting hold of more flats and houses could be practically and politically difficult, given shortages of homes and long council waiting lists.
All of this is why previous legal challenges made by councils have ultimately failed.
The government has a legal duty to house asylum seekers at risk of destitution, so judges have tended to decide that blocking off the hotel option runs the risk of causing ministers to act unlawfully.
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So to return to the previous question.
Yes, the government may well have walked into a political trap here.
But it probably had no choice.
