Keir Starmer has not called for 'more houses to be built' for asylum seekers and illegal immigrants

Context

Recent posts on Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) have shared a thumbnail image of a BBC interview with the U.K. Labour Party leader Keir Starmer. Alongside the thumbnail is a caption that claims Keir Stamer called for "more houses to be built" for asylum seekers and illegal immigrants. 

The caption also claims that Starmer said, "These migrants have to be the priority for the government. They are the future of our economy."

Screenshot of the post circulating on social media. (Source: Facebook)

In fact

There is no evidence that Keir Starmer made these statements.

The screenshot of the BBC interview shared in the posts is from 2022. In the interview, Starmer does not say the quotes attributed to him, nor does he mention increasing housing for asylum seekers or any similar proposal. Instead, he calls for better processing and criticizes the Conservative Party for its backlog of asylum applications. 

In the interview, he agreed with the then-Home Secretary Suella Braverman that the asylum system is broken and added that the Conservatives broke it. However, none of the criticism he gives corresponds to anything that appears in the claimed quotes.

The Facebook posts are screenshots of an older post on X from 2022. The original tweet makes the same claim and provides no additional evidence to support that the quotes are genuine. 

The screenshots have been recirculated several times. UKIP party chairman Ben Walker shared the image in 2023; numerous other accounts circulated them on social media in January 2024. However, the current resurgence of the screenshots has emerged after the anti-immigration X account Getting Britain Moving shared the screenshot. The screenshots have been shared in the context of anti-immigration political discourse.

No evidence could be found that the quotes attributed to Starmer appeared anywhere else or in any other publications.

In a BBC interview in March, Starmer talked about migrants in relation to economic growth. He said that he doesn't think economic growth should be achieved in the way the government has handled it and that the Conservatives' only "plan for growth" economically is migration. He further stated, "I think the way to grow the economy is a long-term plan, a strategic plan, dealing with planning, supply change, and ensuring the government can ensure that private investment comes in."

In several other interviews, Starmer stated that he plans to tackle immigration and "stop the boats." The Labour Party has also said it would be open to an EU migrant quota.

Logically Facts has contacted the Labour Party for comment but has yet to receive a response. 

The verdict

There is no evidence that Keir Starmer called for "more houses to be built" for asylum seekers. Therefore, we have marked the claim as false.