A majority of Brits support the Conservative government’s plans to relocate asylum seekers from hotels across the country onto self-contained migrant barges, new polling revealed.
According to the latest YouGov survey, 59 percent of respondents consider the barges to be an acceptable form of accommodation for migrants who arrived in the country illegally from across the Channel and subsequently claimed asylum.
In contrast, 28 percent of those polled opposed the plans, while 14 percent had no opinion.
More people than not support the move across all regions in the U.K., although the policy is most popular across the English Midlands and the South of England excluding London, where 64 percent and 62 percent approve of the plans.
The least supportive region is London, where 48 percent are in favor of the barges, compared to 37 percent against.
Men are more inclined to back the barges than women, with 64 percent of males supportive and 26 percent opposed, compared to 53 percent of females in favor versus 29 percent against.
Support for the barges typically increases with age — 76 percent of those aged 65+ find the accommodation to be suitable for new arrivals, in contrast with just 19 percent who don’t, while 37 percent of those aged 18-24 find the barges acceptable compared to 26 percent who don’t.
Unsurprisingly, support for the plans is linked to political party affiliation, and 82 percent of Conservative voters are supportive, as are 80 percent of respondents who voted Leave in the 2016 Brexit referendum.
At the other end of the spectrum, just 37 percent of Labour voters back the move, compared to 49 percent who oppose the use of barges to house asylum seekers.
Despite the lack of support among opposition voters, members of Labour’s shadow cabinet recently admitted they would continue to use the barges if they win the next election, at least in the short term.
“The reality is that we’ve got tens of thousands of people in hotels. We need to get them out of hotels and we need to get them off the barges and out of the military camps too,” said Labour’s Shadow Immigration Minister Stephen Kinnock.
“But because of the complete and utter chaos and shambles of the Tory asylum crisis, we are going to have to continue in a very short-term period to use the infrastructure that is there — including the barges and the hotels,” he added.
The first asylum seekers embarked on the Bibby Stockholm barge docked on the tied island of Portland in the English county of Dorset on Monday. The vessel is expected to accommodate up to 500 migrants for the foreseeable future, and the U.K. government is attempting to charter similar boats to be docked across the country as it seeks to reduce the £6 million-per-day taxpayer bill to house more than 50,000 migrants in hotels.
