00:00Let me take you to one of these towns where there is an asylum hotel.
00:04How would you feel if it was a hotel at the end of your vote?
00:07If your daughter was having to walk past one of these hotels every day, how would that make you feel?
00:12I completely get it. I mean, local people, by and large, do not want these hotels in their towns, in their place.
00:19And nor do I. I'm completely at one with them on that.
00:22I'm not in any way underestimating the strength of feeling that there is.
00:30Because people strongly feel that these claims should be processed.
00:35People shouldn't be held at their expense.
00:37They don't want that hotel at the end of the road. They're trying to live their lives.
00:40They're worried if their children are safe.
00:42Well, look, I understand why people want the hotels closed. I want them closed.
00:47And I will work across the board to close them as quickly as possible.
00:51That is my aspiration. Every one of those hotels closed down as quickly as possible.
00:56Well, the way to do that is to work through the backlog.
00:59Can you put a date on it?
01:00Well, we've said we'll get rid of them all by the end of the Parliament.
01:03That's a long way. That's four years away.
01:04I'd like to bring that forward. I think it's a good challenge. I want to bring that forward.
01:07And part of the change in the phasing of government is to say, what we need to do needs to go further and faster and be brought forward.
01:18But do I understand why people are concerned about asylum hotels? Absolutely, I do.
01:22Do I share their feeling that they should be closed as soon as possible? Yes, I do.
01:27But we've got to have a sensible way of actually doing that and not a fanciful proposition.
01:33And it's all very easy for Nigel Farage to put out fanciful propositions that aren't going to work.
01:40It's actually not fair to the public to keep pretending that these answers are there.
01:43And, you know, these are people who just talk down our country.
01:47They want the problems to persist. Nigel Farage doesn't want these problems to go away.
01:51Because once the problem's gone, he's got no grievance.
01:55He's got nothing for his politics to attach to.
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