Labour blasted for 'rolling out the red carpet' for asylum seekers with landlord scheme: 'Enabling invasion of illegals!'

Serco, one of three private contractors working for the Home Office, is offering landlords five-year guaranteed full rent deals at the taxpayer's expense.

A website page with the heading "Calling all landlords" tells prospective clients: "We are confident that our lease provision offers an attractive and competitive proposition within the industry."

Discussing the plans on GB News, property expert and political commentator Russell Quirk claimed that the Labour Government are "enabling the influx" of "illegal migrants" to Britain by offering such schemes.

Quirk explained: "It may well be a better deal for landlords, but I've called this morning on X for landlords to simply just say no, for landlords not to be complicit with this.

"It's for landlords not to give up their properties, no matter how appetising the deal is to the Government on the basis of effectively enabling this continuing influx, this invasion of illegal migrants."

Criticising the scheme, Quirk argued that if the Government continue to launch these schemes, there will be "less incentive" for them to address the migrant crisis and act on it.

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Quirk said: "If we continue to resource these thousands of people rocking up on a monthly basis, there's even less incentive for the Government to do something about it.

"Because of this new incentive, if you're an Albanian or a Vietnamese or an Indian that really has no right to be claiming asylum because you don't come from a war torn country, you're now thinking actually, the prospect of a four star hotel with maybe a bit of room service and a 40-inch flat screen telly was quite appealing - but now I can have my own house. This is fabulous."

He fumed: "We are literally rolling out the red carpet, so this is going to cost more and more and more. What I'm calculating is this year, if they do this, it's another £5billion over and above what taxpayers are spending already. It's outrageous."

Criticising the Government further, Quirk suggested that Labour are "hypocritical" for launching this scheme after "battering" landlords with the Renters Reform Bill.

Quirk concluded: "Landlords have been battered now many, many times over the last few years. Landlords are in a pretty bad place really, actually, in terms of how they've been railed against by successive governments.

"So this latest news that now all of a sudden the Government needs them, from having a pop at landlords consistently and continually to now all of a sudden needing them is quite ironic and pretty hypocritical of the Government, I think, given how they've dealt with landlords."

A Home Office spokesman said: "These arrangements with the private rented sector have been in place for years, including under the previous Government."

"We have a statutory duty to support destitute asylum seekers who will not be able to pay for fees such as utilities and council tax."

The spokesman added: "We are restoring order to the asylum system and cutting costs to taxpayers by reducing the number of people we are required to accommodate. This is being achieved "through a rapid increase in asylum decision-making and the removal of more than 24,000 people with no right to be in the UK".