Lucy Mort

New Report - “This system destroys you”: Children trapped in adult asylum hotels by the Home Office - GMIAU Our new report on children who have been wrongly sent to adult asylum hotels by the UK Home Office.

🚨We have published a NEW REPORT sharing the experiences of children from our All4One youth group who were wrongly treated as adults by the Home Office.

These children arrived in the UK alone seeking asylum, were declared “significantly over 18” at the border and sent alone to adult asylum hotels.

When 1 in 3 of the 4.3 million children living in poverty are children in migrant households, the government just will not be able to cut poverty levels without action for this group of kids

Email your MP and tell them to attend child poverty debate next week! On the 11th June, MPs will have the chance to speak up on the immigration restriction No Recourse to Public Funds and how this cruel policy is pushing children into poverty. We see the devastating imp...

Big news! We’ve secured a debate in Parliament on child poverty next week. We need your help to get your MP in the room to speak out about No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF), one of the most harmful policies facing migrant families.

📝 Email your MP now: act.praxis.org.uk/email-MP-NRP...

Bravo Rivka ✨👏

Bibby Stockholm firm replaces Stay Belvedere Hotels in migrant contract Corporate Travel Management was criticised for its running of the barge in Portland, south Dorset, which was opened by the last government

One provider out, another with its own chequered history in. Meanwhile, costs continue to climb. This Times article cites @ippr.bsky.social research: annual costs per person have risen from £17k to 41k since 2020.

⏳2026 is a critical opportunity to break free from a failing system.

bit.ly/4hGnWTW

This time last week I spoke at the Home Affairs Select Committee about fixing our asylum accommodation system. We urgently need to shift power regionally and locally, improve safeguarding, and move away from mass sites - towards community solutions that work for everyone.

ICYMI: See also this wonderful write up of our report in the @theguardian.com

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Every child is equal: Bridging the childcare gap for families with no recourse to public funds (NRPF) | IPPR Access to high quality, affordable early education and childcare has the potential to be transformative for families. It can have long-lasting impacts on c

Read our report with @praxisprojects.bsky.social 🔗 www.ippr.org/articles/eve...

If the government is serious about opportunity for all children, it must ensure childcare access isn’t blocked by immigration status.

The fix is simple: Remove immigration-based restrictions on childcare support.

This would:
✅ Help parents work & support their families
✅ Reduce child poverty
✅ Improve school readiness & social cohesion

Take Efia, a single mum earning £950/month - she had to quit her job because £756 went straight to nursery fees. How is that sustainable?

New data shows:
📉 41% of parents without childcare say it stops them from working
📉 50% say household finances have worsened
📉 Kids are falling behind before they even start school

Thousands of families - many with British children - are denied 30 hours of free childcare simply because of their immigration status. That means:
🚫 Parents unable to work
💰 Families struggling to afford basics
👶 Kids missing out on early education & social interaction

Last week, @josephinewy.bsky.social and I published a report on childcare - specifically, how migrant families with No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF) are locked out of childcare support, pushing them deeper into poverty and holding back their children. 🧵👇

Fewer than 1 in 10 people support Badenoch’s proposed 15-year wait on citizenship - British Future A new poll by Focaldata finds more than half the public (56%) think citizenship should be available after 5 years or less

(& shoutout to British Future for their polling that helped me to make these arguments!)

www.britishfuture.org/fewer-than-1...

www.ipsos.com/sites/defaul...

Instead of a race to the bottom, we need:
✅ A system that recognises contribution
✅ Security & stability for migrants & families
✅ Policies that build cohesion, not exclusion.

None of this actually helps. It doesn’t reduce migration. It doesn’t help communities. And it doesn’t reflect public opinion - most people support fair routes to settlement.

🔹 Meanwhile, the government has changed policy to permanently bar refugees arriving irregularly from ever becoming citizens. It’s a reaction to Tory attacks - but it won’t stop people coming. It will just entrench exclusion.

🚫 They also plan to deny settlement (ie ILR) to anyone who doesn’t meet a “net contribution” test (a nightmare to measure fairly) & ban people arriving via small boats from ever settling, no matter their circumstances. These are bad ideas.

🔹 The Conservatives essentially want to extend the 10-year route to all migrants. That means more people stuck on expensive, temporary visas for a decade or more - pushing families into poverty & insecurity.

I wrote a blog about the UK’s citizenship & settlement policies - and how both the Conservatives & Labour are making decisions that will trap people in precarity without solving anything. A quick thread on why this matters 🧵👇

Have you spotted a familiar office door while watching Black Doves yet!? 👀

Great report from @savechildrenuk.bsky.social & @ippr.bsky.social highlighting urgent need for early years system to intentionally target closing the disadvantage gap. Key to this is be removing immigration restrictions, otherwise some of poorest children will continue to be left out

🚨 NEW: 2/3 of England's poorest families are missing out on childcare, analysis by @ippr.bsky.social and Save the Children has found.

Without urgent changes, free childcare expansion could miss the families who need it most.

Childcare should be for every child, not just those who can afford it.

New report on childcare from @jodier.bsky.social and @jamie-ohalloran.bsky.social. Highlights that many families are excluded from essential childcare provision, including those with no recourse to public funds.

Look out for detailed research from @josephinewy.bsky.social on this in the new year!

The asylum stats reiterate the fact that too many people are still stuck in woeful hotels. This is costing the gov't a hell of a lot and is no good at all for people living in them. We need local & regional bodies to be put in the driving seat - getting people out of hotels and into communities.

📣New briefing📣
"If one government can come up with this policy, then another one can too": The ongoing impact of the Rwanda detentions in Greater Manchester

gmiau.org/new-briefing...

File on 4 - The Asylum Business - BBC Sounds What is the government’s plan to stop the use of asylum hotels? File on 4 investigates.

This ep of File on 4 is well worth a listen. It features people who feared for their lives when rioters targeted hotels in the summer & highlights @ippr.bsky.social analysis that finds the cost of asylum accom has more than doubled pp in just 5 years from £17k to £41k. www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Today is equal pay day - the day when women in the UK effectively work for free for the rest of the year, because of the gender pay gap 🙃

To mark the occasion, I've made 'Women of the North' starter pack of the incredible northern women you need to follow...

go.bsky.app/P6Hu5Qk

Transforming asylum accommodation | IPPR Instead of providing safety, current policies have trapped people seeking asylum in grim, undignified conditions. The August riots, which included violent

There has to be a new approach, that improves conditions for people seeking asylum & proves value for money. And we need it soon.

See our report for more detail on how: www.ippr.org/articles/tra...