A council leader has said an MP’s claims the local authority takes a “disproportionate number” of asylum seekers were “misleading and inflammatory”.
Conservative MP for Stockton West Matt Vickers said in Parliament last week that Stockton Borough Council had “volunteered” to take in more asylum seekers and it left “huge numbers of lone men hanging around the town centre”.
Responding, Labour’s Lisa Evans said she was “extremely disappointed” by Vickers’ comments.
She said local authority she leads had a “static” number of asylum seekers and that the region had a “proud history” of welcoming people.
Vickers said Stockton’s asylum seekers were all housed near the town centre which caused challenges in accommodation, public services and integration, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.
“The situation is made worse by the council’s approach to housing, which allows huge amounts of houses in multiple occupation, bedsits and bail accommodation to emerge around the town centre,” he said.
But Evans said the council could only house asylum seekers where there were vacancies and it had not taken any decisions to opt into the government’s asylum dispersal scheme.
She said much of the available accommodation is in “houses of multiple occupancies with shared amenities”, but “this position is reflected nationally”.
Evans called the MP’s comments “unfair, inaccurate and inflammatory”.
“He cannot blame the local authority for schemes that his government introduced which he failed to address when they were in power,” she said.
Vickers, a shadow home office minister, said Stockton had “amongst the highest levels of asylum seekers per population in the entire country”.
He said: “What we see today is not a ‘rich, diverse population that contributes to our communities’ as Labour claim, but a rundown town centre and anti-social behaviour out of control.”