Gregory Campbell says “small number of people will use any excuse for racially motivated prejudice”
A senior DUP figure has insisted “skin colour” is “irrelevant” when it comes to his party’s opposition to hotels being used to house asylum seekers.
DUP MP Gregory Campbell was speaking to Belfast Live after his party requested investigations into the planning status of hotels in several council areas used to accommodate asylum seekers, following a legal case in England.
He said that while the hotels are “at the eye of the storm”, there are wider issues around immigration to the UK that he attributed largely to a shortage of housing and stretched health services leading to “anger” from what he described as the “indigenous” population.
Mr Campbell insisted that while there are a “small number of people who will use any excuse for racially motivated prejudice” that is not the “underlying emphasis for a vast number of people”.
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Antrim and Newtownabbey Council said earlier this week that an enforcement investigation had begun into the legal planning status of the Chimney Corner Hotel in Co Antrim being used to house asylum seekers.
Now, two more council areas – Causeway Coast and Glens, and Ards and North Down – have also said they have received queries about planning status for hotels in the areas.
The requests for investigations follow a legal case in England. Epping Forest District Council was granted a temporary injunction by the High Court on Tuesday which blocks asylum seekers from being housed at the Bell Hotel in the Essex town. Current residents are to be removed by September 12.
Mr Campbell’s party colleague, Causeway Coast and Glens councillor Aaron Callan, confirmed in a statement earlier this week the DUP had sought an investigation in that area.
“In terms of the local issue at the moment [in the Causeway Coast and Glens area], I’m obviously not going to name the hotels because that could lead to, you know, other problems,” Mr Campbell told Belfast Live. “But there were, up until last month, two hotels on the north coast that were being used. One of them stopped being used last last month, so that means there’s one.”
Asked to explain why his party is opposing the use of hotels to provide accommodation to asylum seekers, he said: “I mean, the hotels are in the eye of the storm because of this court case this week in England but, for us, it’s a wider issue than hotels.
“Even if every hotel in the UK, including the ones in Northern Ireland, were closed tomorrow the same people are going to be housed somewhere else. A lot of people – who are indigenous people who have lived here, born here, grown up here – they’re trying to get either social housing or private housing, and can’t get it.
“And then they see people coming in, some of whom are here illegally, being put up in a hotel. You can understand why there would be not just frustration, but anger.”
He continued: “The problem is the sheer volume of people who are coming to this country. At the moment, the problem is the hotels, because what that does is that puts in stark contrast to many, many people, the problems that they themselves face.
“They look at other people getting what they perceive to be preferential treatment because they can’t get housing. Say, in three months or in six months, they resolve the hotel problem the problem will re-emerge in housing because of the volume of people that are coming. The nub of it, the underlying basis of the problem, won’t be resolved if you still have sheer numbers of people coming.”
In 2021, the East Londonderry MP refused to apologise after criticism of his comments about the number of black people taking part in an edition of BBC’s Songs of Praise.
He had come under fire for describing the number of black people participating in the Sunday programme as “the BBC at its BLM (Black Lives Matter) worst”.
Following criticism, he refused to apologise for his remarks and, in a radio interview with the BBC, described himself as “a committed anti-racist”. He later met with a charity in Derry
Asked by Belfast Live if his comments on immigration would leave him open to an accusation of racism, Mr Campbell insisted ethnic background is “irrelevant”.
“There are a small number of people who will use any excuse for racially motivated prejudice, but I don’t believe that is the underlying emphasis for a vast number of people,” he said.
“The people I speak to, they’re not concerned about the color of anybody’s skin or the background of what their culture is. They’re concerned what happens when anybody, whatever skin color, wherever they come from, if they come in significant numbers into a country and they don’t adapt to living in the country that they are in i.e. Northern Ireland.”
He added: “For me it’s irrelevant what what color the skin is.”
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