Military Bases for Asylum Seekers: Britain's Endless Loop of Failed Solutions
Why Labour's Plan to Use Military Sites is Just Déjà Vu
Defence Secretary John Healey's announcement to use military sites for asylum seekers is less a new solution and more a repetition of past failures. With asylum hotel costs at £8 million daily and no clear plan to end their use, the government is recycling failed strategies amid political panic rather than evidence-based planning. This move highlights Britain's institutional decay, where basic governmental functions are outsourced to military resources, reflecting a broader collapse in administrative competence.
Defence Secretary John Healey confirms what observant citizens have long suspected: the government has no actual plan to solve the asylum crisis. Instead, we’re witnessing another iteration of the same failed approach—shuffling desperate people between inappropriate facilities while claiming progress that never materializes.
The announcement that military sites will house asylum seekers isn’t innovation. It’s institutional memory loss. We’ve been here before, multiple times, with identical results.
Key Facts
The numbers tell the story politicians won’t. Hotel costs for asylum seekers currently run at £8 million per day—nearly £3 billion annually. The government’s “absolute determination” to end hotel use by 2029 has now become a vague promise to do it “sooner,” with no specific timeline or measurable targets.
Military planners are being embedded in border operations, yet small boat crossings continue unabated. In 2024, over 30,000 people crossed the Channel. The “smash the gangs” pledge from July 2024 has produced no discernible reduction in arrivals.
The catalyst for this latest policy shift? Not strategic planning, but reactive panic following protests in Essex after a 14-year-old girl was sexually assaulted by an asylum seeker. This is how UK immigration policy gets made now—not through evidence-based planning, but through crisis management and political pressure.
Critical Analysis
The Institutional Amnesia
RAF Wethersfield and RAF Scampton were already being used for asylum accommodation under the previous government. Both sites faced legal challenges, safety concerns, and proved more expensive than hotels. Napier Barracks in Kent housed asylum seekers from 2020-2021 until the High Court ruled conditions unlawful. The Home Office was found to have ignored Public Health England warnings about COVID risks and overcrowding.
Yet here we are again, presenting military sites as if they’re a fresh solution rather than a documented failure.
The Numbers Game
Healey claims “record numbers” of deportations over the last year. The actual figure? 13,000 removals in 2024—a fraction of annual arrivals and lower than pre-2010 levels when the system functioned more effectively. Meanwhile, the asylum backlog stands at over 120,000 cases, with average processing times exceeding 18 months.
The government simultaneously claims it will process people “rapidly” while proposing to house them in “temporary” military accommodation. History shows these temporary solutions become permanent problems. Napier Barracks was meant to be temporary. It operated for over a year despite being deemed unsuitable within weeks.
The Political Theatre
The timing reveals everything. Reform UK’s double-digit poll lead and Farage’s absurd promise to stop boats “within two weeks” has triggered this announcement. The replacement of Yvette Cooper with Shabana Mahmood as Home Secretary after just six months signals panic, not strategy.
Both major parties now compete to sound tougher while implementing variations of the same ineffective policies. Labour criticizes Conservative failures while recycling Conservative solutions. The Conservatives attack Labour’s approach while ignoring their own 14-year record of escalating dysfunction.
The Pattern
This is Britain’s asylum policy cycle, endlessly repeating:
- Political pressure builds over visible failures
- Ministers announce “tough new measures” involving military/security responses
- Implementation reveals the same structural problems
- Costs spiral while outcomes worsen
- Public anger increases
- Return to step 1
We saw this with:
- Detention centers (2000s) - closed due to costs and legal challenges
- Rwanda scheme (2022-2024) - £290 million spent, zero asylum seekers sent
- Bibby Stockholm barge (2023-2024) - housed 500 people at triple the cost of hotels
- Military sites (2020-2021, 2023-2024, and now 2025)
The Reality Check
Military bases aren’t designed for civilian accommodation. They lack appropriate facilities for families, children, vulnerable individuals, or long-term residence. Converting them costs millions, takes months, and creates new problems without solving existing ones.
The real crisis isn’t where to house asylum seekers—it’s the complete breakdown of processing capacity. In 2010, initial asylum decisions took 30 days. Now they take 18 months. In 2010, appeals were resolved in 6 months. Now they take 2-3 years.
The system doesn’t need military planners. It needs competent civil servants, proper funding, and politicians willing to implement boring, effective solutions rather than headline-grabbing theatre.
What This Really Means
Britain can’t perform basic governmental functions anymore. Processing asylum claims—determining who has valid claims and who doesn’t—is fundamental administrative work that dozens of countries manage efficiently. Germany processes 300,000 claims annually with average decision times of 6 months. France manages 150,000 with 4-month averages.
The UK, with far fewer applications, has created permanent crisis through deliberate understaffing, constant reorganization, and prioritizing political messaging over operational competence.
Military involvement in civilian administration isn’t strength—it’s admission of institutional collapse. When governments deploy military resources for basic civil functions, they’re acknowledging their civilian institutions have failed.
The Bigger Picture
This latest announcement perfectly captures UK decline: recycling failed solutions, driven by political panic rather than evidence, ignoring documented history, and presenting dysfunction as determination.
The asylum system’s collapse isn’t isolated. It mirrors failures across government—the NHS backlog, court delays, passport office chaos, DVLA dysfunction. The common thread? Institutions that once functioned adequately now operate in permanent crisis mode, lurching between political interventions that worsen underlying problems.
Reform UK’s “modular steel structures” and Labour’s military sites are the same non-solution wrapped in different rhetoric. Neither addresses why Britain can’t perform basic administrative tasks that functioning states handle routinely.
The real story isn’t about hotels, military bases, or boats. It’s about a state that has forgotten how to govern, politicians who’ve replaced competence with performance, and institutions that consume billions while delivering dysfunction.
Welcome to managed decline, where failure gets rebranded as action, and the same mistakes repeat endlessly while everyone pretends not to notice.
The Decliner - Documenting Britain’s institutional decay, one policy failure at a time.
Commentary based on Military sites may be used to house asylum seekers, says defence secretary by Rowena Mason on The Guardian.