Minister condemns ‘unacceptable’ violence outside Knowsley asylum hotel

Andrew Mitchell said the Home Office was ‘trying very hard now to stop the excessive use of hotels’ for housing asylum seekers. Photograph: Jeff Overs/BBC/PA

Violence outside a hotel housing asylum seekers in Knowsley was “completely unacceptable”, a minister has said, amid growing criticism of the government’s use of “dehumanising” language to describe people seeking refuge in the UK.

The international development minister, Andrew Mitchell, said the violent scenes in Merseyside on Friday night, in which a police van was set alight and stones were thrown, were “totally unjustifiable … and the government condemns it absolutely”.