Police outside the Bell Hotel, London, Epping Forest.

Rachel Reeves was very clear when she set out the government’s plan to end the use of asylum hotels by the next election.

“[The Conservatives] left behind a broken system,” she told MPs in June.

“Billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money spent on housing asylum seekers in hotels, leaving people in limbo and shunting the cost of failure onto local communities. We won’t let that stand.

“Led by the work of the home secretary, we will be ending the costly use of hotels to house asylum seekers, in this parliament.”

Her ministerial colleague Dan Jarvis, however, was more equivocal when quizzed on the issue this morning.

Asked repeatedly where the government will house asylum seekers if not in hotels, the Home Office minister would only say they were “looking at a range of different contingency options”.

The issue has shot back up the political agenda after Mr Justice Eyre

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