The Ministry of Internal Affairs will reduce the number of hotels for migrants

The Bibby Stockholm barge is one of the new mass accommodation facilities designed to replace hotels. Photo: AFP

The number of hotels used by asylum seekers will be cut by a third over five months, ministers are due to announce this week.

Robert Jenrick, the immigration secretary, is expected to tell MPs on Tuesday that the Home Office would terminate contracts with more than 100 hotels to cut daily bills by £8 million over the next three to five months.

Some 51,000 migrants are currently being housed in around 400 hotels across England and Wales, sparking fury. from the Conservatives, particularly in «red wall» constituencies such as Stoke, Mansfield, Wigan and Blackpool.

The move comes as there has been a sharp increase in the number of asylum applications processed by the Home Office and a 25% drop number of migrants crossing the English Channel.

On Sunday Mr Jenrick said there was a backlog of cases. Asylum cases were “falling rapidly”, reducing the need for hotels to house them.

“When I became Home Secretary we were making 400 asylum decisions a week. We are now making 4,500 asylum decisions a week,” he said.

The latest figures show there is a backlog of 92,000 cases up to June 2022, which Rishi Sunak has promised to clear by the end of this year. decreased to approximately 55,000.

Meanwhile, the number of migrants crossing the English Channel this year was 26,200, compared with 37,600 at the same point last year. This means Border Force expects the final number of small craft arrivals in the English Channel could be around 30 per cent lower than last year's record 45,755.

It is understood ministers must also announce new mass accommodation sites to replace hotels. Only three have been announced so far, including the Bibby Stockholm barge in Portland Dorset and the former RAF bases at Wethersfield, Essex, and Scampton, Lincolnshire, which are designed to accommodate 3,200 migrants.

They are clear. to include former student halls in Huddersfield, where 650 migrants will be given accommodation that originally housed 200 students.

Ministers will welcome the move as evidence that the Government is beginning to win the battle to stop the boats, although much will depend from a Supreme Court ruling due in December on the legality of plans to deport migrants to Rwanda for asylum.

Rwanda's policies are seen as crucial to keeping migrants from crossing the border, although government insiders are «pessimistic» about prospects for winning the case. It was reported over the weekend that officials believed the odds of winning the ruling were 60:40.

Failure to win the case is likely to prompt demands within the Cabinet and among cabinet ministers for the party's right to leave the party . European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).