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A HOMELESS hostel exposed by the Daily Record has been condemned in Holyrood as a “Soviet gulag” where conditions are worse than prison.

The criticism came during an explosive debate sparked by our undercover investigation at Glasgow’s squalid

Bellgrove Hotel where the owners rake in £1.5million a year in housing benefit.

MSP John Mason raised a motion signed by 21 members from across the political divide calling for better regulation of the hostel “as a matter of urgency”.

Holyrood are confronting the issue after the Record lifted the lid on shocking scenes of deprivation.

We discovered tiny rooms with barred windows that look on to a rat-infested courtyard, while blitzed men were left unconscious in filthy corridors.

Fatcats Ron Barr and Kenneth Gray are banking the housing benefit payments through their firm who run the facility.

Mason, Glasgow Shettleston SNP MSP, said: “I thank the members who signed the motion, which enabled the debate to take place.

“The Bellgrove is the largest remaining homeless hostel in Scotland.

“It has conditions that, generously, could be considered unsuitable, and, less generously, grim, Dickensian, like a Soviet gulag or similar descriptions.

“When I visited Shotts prison and Low Moss prison recently, I found conditions in both prisons to be much better, with en suite facilities.

“That is something to which residents of the Bellgrove can only aspire; they must make do with a communal shower room, which I suspect that many members would refuse even to think of using.”

Mason added: “When the Daily Record recently put in an undercover journalist, very little seemed to have changed.

“Surely the 140 constituents at the Bellgrove deserve help from someone.”

During our investigation into the squalor at the Bellgrove, we found pools of vomit on the floor of the windowless TV room. And the air was thick with cannabis smoke.

Barr and Gray, meanwhile, have become rich from the enterprise after buying the run-down building for £65,000 in 1988.

Both live in posh homes on Glasgow’s southside and have brought family members in as shareholders through their company Careside Hotels.

Glasgow Labour MSP Anne McTaggart said: “While these horrid conditions are left unchanged, those who are responsible for them are swindling the taxpayer out of £1.5million every year through the housing benefits that are given.”

She added: “I ask the Scottish Government to produce legislation that controls and changes places such as the Bellgrove, so that people cannot profit from the misfortune of others while providing utterly substandard accommodation.

“We all know what is happening is wrong. Now let us do something about it.”

After our investigation, Glasgow City Council refused to extend the Bellgrove’s licence for three years, instead only granting one year while insisting on an extensive programme of improvements.

A wider probe into the hostel is also being carried out by the council and the Government.

Sandra White, Glasgow Kelvin SNP MSP, added: “How come people are spending £200 a week in benefits in this so-called hotel? It is advertised as a hotel.

“That is £800 a month of benefits going to private individuals. As my colleague Anne McTaggart said, these owners and landlords make £1.5million a year in what can only be described as a Dickensian type of place for people to stay.”

Referring to the Record’s investigation, she added: “I have read reports about men lying in their own vomit, drunk or on drugs and there is absolutely nobody there to look after them.

“In my area of Glasgow Kelvin, £800 a month would get someone a very good flat or other accommodation.”

Housing and Welfare Minister Margaret Burgess said: “I’ve a great deal of sympathy with members’ concerns about the amount of public money being paid to the owners of the Bellgrove in that way.

“However, housing benefit is reserved, so there is nothing the Scottish Government can do about the issue.

“We are working with Glasgow City Council to ensure the safety of the people in the Bellgrove and to examine alternative solutions for them.

“The conditions that have been reported in the press are clearly not acceptable.”

The Daily Record says...

THE squalid conditions in the Bellgrove Hotel in the east end of Glasgow have been rightly condemned by John Mason MSP as being worse than a prison.

We know that’s a fair description because one of our reporters spent a night undercover in the doss house to expose the terrible conditions that residents have to endure.

The Bellgrove is a stain on the regeneration of the east end of Glasgow, where new and refurbished housing, combined with the Commonwealth legacy and massive investment by the city council, show signs of turning things around.

The social security “hotel” stands as an appalling reminder of how we still allow people to fall into the gap between social care and private enterprise and how their misery ends up lining the pockets of very wealthy people.

In that sense, the Bellgrove shames us all.

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