24-06-2025
Plan to end asylum hotels will fail, watchdog warns
However, Mr Bolt said: 'I think there's a more fundamental issue about accommodation, or at least housing stock, there simply isn't sufficient housing stock to be able to deal with the sorts of numbers in the system. I think it's really, really challenging.'
A Downing Street spokesman said he did not agree that there would be a lack of housing stock. 'I don't accept that. As I say, the Government is committed to restoring grip to the asylum system, allowing us to end the use of hotels,' he said.
Mr Bolt, who previously served as borders chief between 2015 and 2021, and returned as interim chief inspector in June last year, also told peers he wrote to ministers to say he 'wasn't convinced smashing the gangs was the right way of thinking about things' in tackling Channel crossings.
He said: 'It did seem to me the challenge was to change the risk reward ratio for those people involved in organised immigration crime, that's really a difficult thing to achieve, because it's relatively low cost, relatively low risk for the perpetrators and highly profitable.
'I'm not sure I feel very optimistic about the ability to smash the gangs and, in any event, it seems to me with organised crime, the best thing you can do is deflect it to something else you're less concerned about rather than expect to eradicate it.'
He added that he believed the establishment of the Border Security Command has brought energy and focus to the issue, and it has been agreed with its chief, Martin Hewitt, for the unit to be inspected later this year.
But he also agreed more needed to be done to tackle the issue in the UK and look at what is attracting people to come to the country.
Mr Bolt said: 'The availability of illegal working, that I think is one of the issues the Home Office has tried to focus on and tried to close down as best it can and will continue to have to work very hard on that.'
