Priti Patel spends almost £5 million a day on hotel bills for asylum seekers

Home Secretary Priti Patel has been forced to admit that spending has totalled £4.7million every day on housing asylum seekers in hotels.

The Home Office has issued a correction to the figure given by Tricia Hayes to the Home Affairs Committee.

The senior civil servant told MPs that the Home Office were spending £1.2 million a day on housing asylum seekers.

Later, however, the Government admitted that this number related only to Afghan refugees and accommodating asylum seekers from other countries actually costs an additional £3.5 million a day.

In Wednesday's committee session, Priti Patel admitted the policy was "thoroughly inadequate."

It costs £127 per person per day to house an asylum seeker in a hotel however the Home Secretary has highlighted that, due to infrastructure problems, there is a difficulty in finding permanent accommodation.

Priti Patel said local councils are "absolutely struggling" to house Afghan refugees.

A Home Office spokesman said there are currently 25,000 thousand refugees in hotel accommodation and a further 12,000 afghan refugees in bridging accommodation.

A spokesman said: "The use of hotels is unacceptable. It is a short-term solution to the global migration crisis and we are working hard to find appropriate dispersed accommodation for migrants, asylum seekers and Afghan refugees as soon as possible.

"We would urge local authorities to do all they can to help house people permanently.

"Our New Plan for Immigration, which is going through Parliament now, will fix the broken asylum system, enabling us to remove those with no right to be here more quickly."