Nigel Farage ally pledges costly legal battles after hollow migrant hotel vow

Nigel Farage's council minions are set to plough public cash into futile court battles over asylum hotels, Reform UK's chief has indicated.

Mr Farage has been accused of making promises he cannot keep by vowing to resist asylum seekers arriving in areas controlled by Reform. But his party chairman struggled to give a convincing answer on how it would do this - sparking claims of "legal challenges and faux anger".

The Government has vowed to end the use of hotels to house asylum seekers following years of Tory failure - with refugee charities demanding faster action. In an awkward TV exchange, Reform chairman Zia Yusuf floundered when asked how his party would push back.

He said his council chiefs would be launching legal challenges - before admitting they do not have the powers to block asylum seekers moving to their area. Mr Yusuf was asked by the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg: "How on earth can you do that when migrants get sent to go and live in hotels because of contracts between the Home Office nationally and big providers? So how will you actually do that?

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"Because again, we've checked this, the break clauses for these contracts is not till 2029. So why are you promising something you can't deliver?" Mr Yusuf conceded that council powers "pale in comparison to the levers of power in Westminster".

But he said: "We'll use every instrument of power available to us to stop it. And there are things you can do - there are judicial reviews, there are injunctions. There's a lot of different things can be done around planning, budget allocation..."

Ms Kuenssberg pressed the Reform chairman, telling him: "You don't have the power, perhaps, to keep the promise that you've made." Mr Yusuf conceded that was true, stating: "A lot of these hotels, when you suddenly turn them into something else, which is essentially a hostel that falls foul of a number of regulations, and that's what our teams of lawyers are exploring at the moment.

"So we can look at budgets as well. So the word we used was resist. Look, we're not in government yet. That's our plan."

There are currently around 38,000 asylum seekers in hotel, costing the Government around £5.5million a day. Under the Tories the cost had climbed to £8million every 24 hours.

Mr Farage's pledge looks like an attempt to back into a corner by making a pledge he can blame others for not fulfilling. A No10 source : “The public rightly expect more than legal challenges and faux anger from their MPs, mayors, councillors. As the Tories learned the hard way, people want change. This government will deliver it.”

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