Keir Starmer’s Labour Party seems keen to present a fresh face on the UK’s asylum crisis by pushing migrants out of the frying pan and into the fire.

There are a lot of glossy words around the new policy— but behind them lies a very familiar story of public money flowing into private hands.

Instead of housing asylum-seekers in expensive hotels, Labour’s plan appears to shift them into rented private properties — handing yet another lucrative opportunity to landlords and property investors.

It’s simply moving the so-called “problem” from one profit-making scheme to another.

Private contractor Serco, working on behalf of the Home Office, is already aggressively recruiting landlords with promises of guaranteed five-year rent deals, free property management, and even paid council tax bills.

Their sales pitch is clear: a stress-free, taxpayer-funded revenue stream for landlords.

Meanwhile, more than 1.3 million desperate British families wait on social housing lists.

Rents in the private sector are soaring, supply is stretched to breaking point, and yet more properties will now be siphoned off to make profits from housing vulnerable people.

Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp wasted no time accusing Labour of “giving a better deal to illegal immigrants than to hard-working Britons.”

But what Philp conveniently forgets is that this system, relying on private contractors like Serco, has been operating since 1999 — under both Labour and Conservative governments.

And under the Tories’ recent tenure, chaos and backlogs exploded, leaving tens of thousands of people languishing in hotels at a cost of £145 a night.

Serco’s current offer to landlords costs £14 a night per migrant — a bargain compared to hotels, but a massive opportunity for exploitation.

One council leader bluntly pointed out: “Serco is encouraging landlords to exploit taxpayers, and it’s local councils who get blamed for the inevitable rise in rents and the strain on community services.”

Refugee advocates, too, are warning that this model is fundamentally broken.

Enver Solomon of the Refugee Council slammed the government’s continued outsourcing of responsibility, saying the dispersal system is “dysfunctional and costly”, with asylum seekers often “dumped in isolated areas” without proper support or integration efforts.

Despite all this, Labour seems determined to continue feeding the same machine.

Instead of reforming the asylum system to ensure humane, community-based accommodation — and investing in council-run housing and services — they are doubling down on the failed model of privatisation and profit.

The numbers paint a bleak picture: 8,888 migrants have crossed the Channel so far in 2025 — a 42 per cent rise on the same period last year.

Yet the government’s only solutions seem to be more outsourcing, more landlord profiteering, and more hollow rhetoric about “cutting costs” while communities bear the burden.

The real cost here isn’t just financial — it’s the erosion of trust, the worsening housing crisis, and the continued abuse of a broken, privatised asylum system.

Starmer’s “change”? It looks a lot like the same old story.