00:00Gemma, I feel like migration has just become such a focus point in British politics, and more so than ever.
00:10Yeah, I mean, it's always been in British politics.
00:14I think ever since Windrush brought across, you know, the first kind of people from the Commonwealth who came to the UK to start new lives.
00:22And the story hasn't changed, but perhaps the nationalities of the people coming has changed, the cultures.
00:28That's the only thing that's changed, but it has always been part of British politics, you know, immigration.
00:35So this comes from the release of new figures, which show that there were 32,000 asylum seekers in UK hotels at the end of June.
00:43Now that's up 8% from the same last year.
00:46It is actually down on the previous quarter, but, you know, it's always the rising numbers which are going to make the headlines.
00:53So, as you said, this is all to do with what happened at this hotel in Epping, which is in Essex in the UK.
01:03A man was accused of sexually assaulting a young girl in the local town.
01:08Now, the fact is that we're putting people who have come over together in these hotels, in these quite sort of perhaps rural, but kind of out-of-the-way places in the UK.
01:24They're not in big cities.
01:25They're not allowed to work, obviously.
01:27There's probably lots of different cultures.
01:29You know, there might be lots of single men in one hotel.
01:32There might be, you know, women and families in another hotel.
01:35And they're just kind of left there because there's no, there's a shortage of housing, as there is, you know, across so many countries now.
01:44There's a shortage of affordable housing and places to put them.
01:47So, you are almost creating these, like, mini ghettos where, obviously, stories are going to come out.
01:54And once stories start coming out...
01:56Mini ghettos in the middle of British villages.
01:58Yeah, yeah.
01:58And that's been the big issue.
02:00Yeah, and you get protests from local people who start hearing stories.
02:06You know, they might not be getting the full story, but it just escalates and escalates and escalates.
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