UNDER fire Sir Keir Starmer today vowed to accelerate his 2029 deadline for shutting illegal migrant hotels – but refused to commit to a specific date.
The PM slammed Nigel Farage ‘s sweeping deportation plans while pledging to fast-track Labour’s original timeline for ending the hotel chaos.
Sir Keir accused his political arch-rival of peddling “fanciful and unworkable” solutions to the small boats crisis.
Yet he acknowledged public frustration, saying he “completely understands why people are so concerned” about Britain’s border insecurity.
Speaking to BBC Five Live, the PM said: “It’s a really serious issue. We have to have control of our borders, and I completely get it.
“I’m determined that whether it’s people crossing in the first place, whether it’s people in asylum hotels, or whether it’s returning people, we absolutely have to deal with this.”
Pressed on when illegal migrant hotels will finally shut, Sir Keir replied: “We’ve said we’ll get rid of them by the end of the Parliament .
“I would like to bring that forward, I think it is a good challenge.
“I want to bring that forward.”
Nation-wide protests over the summer pushed the PM to act as public anger over hotel use reached boiling point.
The Home Office currently houses around 32,000 asylum seekers in over 200 hotels across Britain.
Critics from Reform and the Tories have accused the PM of failing to take decisive steps, such as quitting the European Court of Human Rights, to regain control of Britain’s borders.
Last month, Mr Farage unveiled his radical mass deportation blueprint, dubbed “Operation Restoring Justice,” aiming to expel up to 600,000 undocumented migrants over five years.
His plan includes withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights, scrapping the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, and establishing detention centres with compulsory deportations, even for women and children.
Taking aim at Mr Farage’s proposal, Sir Keir said: “The difference here is between an orderly sensible way of actually fixing a problem we inherited from the Tories or fanciful arrangements that are just not going to work.
“ Nigel Farage and Reform are just the politics of grievance. They feed on grievance.
“They don’t want the problem solved because they’ve got no reason to exist if the problems are solved.”
The PM added that Mr Farage’s plan is “not fair to put forward to the public” because it is an idea that “just isn’t going to work”.
The comments follow a summer in which furious protests against the continuation of migrant hotels errupted across the country.
The Bell Hotel in Epping, Essex, became a flash point for discontent after two of its guests were charged with sexual offences.
Epping Forest District Council last month won a bid at the High Court to block migrants from being housed at the hotel.
But the Court of Appeal today overturned the injunction following an appeal by the Home Office and hotel owners Somani – meaning the migrants can stay where they are for now.
