Hotels are paid millions by the taxpayer to keep 5,000 beds permanently empty as an overspill for Channel migrants

• Extra rooms were secured following concerns over overcrowding at Manston

Taxpayers are picking up the tab for 5,000 hotel beds to be kept permanently empty as an overspill for Channel migrants, it emerged last night.

Senior Home Office civil servants confirmed the rooms are booked – and paid for – as a ‘buffer’ for the asylum processing centre at Manston in Kent.

The department’s second permanent secretary Simon Ridley explained the 5,000 extra hotel spaces to the Commons public accounts committee.

‘We have got excess beds that we’re paying for that we can move people into immediately,’ Mr Ridley told MPs. ‘We are making sure we have got a buffer of as close to 5,000 beds, so we’ve always got an outflow.’

He indicated the extra rooms were secured following concerns over overcrowding at the Manston base, near Ramsgate.

Pictured: Migrants are brought into Dover Marina by Border Force vessel Hurricane 

Senior Home Office civil servants confirmed the rooms are booked – and paid for – as a ‘buffer’ for the asylum processing centre at Manston in Kent (pictured)

Home Office permanent secretary Sir Matthew Rycroft revealed the department was in discussions with a ‘number of other countries’ which could take asylum seekers if the Rwanda deal stalls. Mr Ridley also conceded that the number of migrants to arrive this year ‘could be upwards of last year’s number’, when a record 45,728 came.

It came as Tory MP Sir Brandon Lewis warned the impact of the small boats crisis on housing and public services risks ‘fuelling public resentment’.

He called for a ‘radical resetting’ of asylum policy as a report by think-tank Policy Exchange estimated asylum is costing £3.5billion a year.

Today’s study by Policy Exchange senior adviser Dr Rakib Ehsan said migrants are distributed unequally across the country, which could lead to unrest.

The report concluded it risked ‘future public disorder’ as seen outside a migrant hotel in Knowsley, Merseyside, in March.

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