Skip to main content
Gifts from The Morning Star
Serco and the degrading living conditions for asylum-seekers
The inadequate housing system for refugees is a disgrace, writes DIANE ABBOTT
LONE VOICE: Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration David Bolt [UK Government]

IN the last months of 2018 we saw two damning reports of outsourced asylum accommodation in Britain, and yet this week the government went ahead and gave billions of pounds worth of new contracts to outsourcers, including Serco which alone got an estimated £1.9 billion over a 10-year period.

These private companies have already failed to provide decent asylum accommodation, as they have failed in so many areas of social provision and campaigners have termed the award of these contracts as a slap in the face to those of who have suffered at their hands.

A report from Parliament’s cross-party home affairs select committee in December received widespread coverage and delivered a devastating critique of the system of housing for those who apply for refugee status and castigated Home Office failure to show “greater urgency” about improving conditions.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
More from this author
Traji Adwan (centre) mourns during the funeral of her 11-year-old grandchild Qais, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike on a school in Gaza that has been used as a shelter, at Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, July 25, 2025
Features / 26 July 2025
26 July 2025

Our Foreign Secretary now condemns Israel in the Commons, yet Britain still supplies weapons and intelligence for its bombing campaigns — as the horror reaches perhaps the final stage, action must finally replace words, writes DIANE ABBOTT MP

cuts and war
Features / 12 July 2025
12 July 2025

The BBC and OBR claim that failing to cut disability benefits could ‘destabilise the economy’ while ignoring the spendthrift approach to tens of billions on military spending that really spirals out of control, argues DIANE ABBOTT MP

President Donald Trump gestures during a press conference after the plenary session at the NATO summit in The Hague, Netherlands, June 25, 2025
Features / 28 June 2025
28 June 2025

Europe is acquiescing in Trump’s manoeuvrings — where Europe takes over the US forever war in Ukraine while Washington gets ready for a future fight with China. And it’s working people who will be left paying the price, says DIANE ABBOTT MP

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer speaking during a press conference on the Immigration White Paper, May 12, 2025
Politics / 31 May 2025
31 May 2025

DIANE ABBOTT MP argues that Labour’s proposals contained in the recent white paper won’t actually bring down immigration numbers or win support from Reform voters — but they will succeed in making politics more nasty and poisonous 
 

Similar stories
SITTING PRETTY: (Left to right) Baroness Liddell, Claire Kob
Features / 29 November 2024
29 November 2024
Let’s take a closer look at the sprawling network of former ministers, political insiders and officials who make money from the firms responsible for soldiers’ squalid accommodation, writes SOLOMON HUGHES