Labour was told to put more migrants ‘on a plane home’ tonight as it announced plans to give asylum seekers taxpayer-funded bed and board at three more former military barracks.

Ministers said they had lodged planning permission to turn RAF Barnham in Suffolk, RAF Linton-on-Ouse in Yorkshire and a former Army barracks in Bicester, Oxfordshire, into accommodation for asylum seekers.

They also outlined plans to extend and expand the use of existing sites in Crowborough until 2030 and Wethersfield beyond 2027. Overall, the plans would create close to another 5,000 beds.

But the move risks sparking a furious backlash among locals near the sites.

Previous plans to house up to 1,500 asylum seekers at RAF Linton-on-Ouse were abandoned in 2022 following a protest by nearby households and a legal challenge from the local council.

It came as ministers announced the closure of another 20 hotels where migrants were being housed, including the Bell Hotel in Epping.

It was thrust into the national spotlight after Ethiopian national Hadush Kebatu, who had been staying there, sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl and a woman just eight days after arriving by small boat.

Labour said the closures would save taxpayers £170million this financial year and claimed overall asylum costs had already been reduced by nearly £1billion.

But the Tories slammed the plans tonight, saying Labour shouldn’t have ditched its Rwanda deportation scheme and that Britain must leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to take back full control of the borders.

Chris Philp, the Tories' Shadow Home Secretary, said: ‘Labour should be putting illegal immigrants on a plane home rather than messing around with military camps and hotels.

‘Under Labour, almost every small boat arrival has been allowed to stay, because Labour will not do what is needed to tear down the barriers to deportation, and without deportation, there is no deterrent.

‘Only the Conservatives have the backbone and the plan to leave the ECHR and end the lawfare (drawn-out human rights legal claims) that blocks removals, so every illegal immigrant can be deported.

‘If we did that there wouldn’t be the need to house illegal immigrants in the first place.’

It comes after leaked documents revealed the Home Office identified more than 400,000 illegal migrants in the UK - but nearly half of them could not be removed

This was because of outstanding asylum and human rights claims.

In August 2024, Immigration Enforcement, the agency responsible for removing illegal migrants, counted 412,191 in its ‘population of interest’.

But 201,926 were identified as ‘not removable’ because of outstanding immigration applications, including asylum claims, appeals and legal challenges lodged to stop their deportation.

The majority - 149,365 - had outstanding human rights, modern slavery or asylum claims, and the remaining 52,561 had open appeals.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is set to publish the Immigration and Asylum Bill in parliament on Tuesday, which aims to introduce new curbs on illegal migrants’ abilities to dodge deportation.

She will claim it will allow the government to increase the number of illegal migrants deported.

She is also expected to double the budget for Immigration Enforcement by 2029 and increase its officer numbers by nearly two-thirds

Labour has pledged to stop using asylum hotels by the next election.

The number of asylum seekers being housed temporarily in UK hotels has fallen to its lowest level since data was first reported in 2022, according to Home Office figures published last month.

There were 20,885 people staying in such accommodation while they were awaiting a decision on their asylum claims at the end of March, down 35% year-on-year from 32,326. The total had climbed as high as 56,018 at the end of September 2023.

Border Security and Asylum Minister Alex Norris said: ‘We promised to close every asylum hotel and hand them back to communities, and that is exactly what we are doing.

‘Twenty more hotels have closed, and hotel numbers have more than halved since their peak.

‘Instead, we’re moving asylum seekers into ex-military sites that are a far cry from the hotels the last Government left us with.

‘This is a system being brought back under control – and we will not stop until the job is done.’