Asylum seekers could be housed in camps to prevent communities being overwhelmed by the Channel migrant crisis, Kemi Badenoch suggested.

The Conservative Party leader warned Labour is set to move people out of hotels and into “private accommodation”, making things “much worse”.

Some 32,345 asylum seekers are currently living in hotels, costing almost £5.6m a day, while 66,683 are living in “dispersal accommodation” – houses, flats and bedsits – across the country.

And she claimed, during a visit to Epping, that small boat arrivals could be housed in “camps”.

Mrs Badenoch said: “Is it possible for us to set up camps and police that, rather than bringing all of this hassle into communities?

“As a party, we need to also hear from the community about what you think the solutions are. We don’t have all the answers; it’s important that we make sure that the community is part of the problem solved.”

The MP for North West Essex said that politicians must “turn things around very quickly”. The Conservative Party leader warned that some communities “don’t feel safe”, as she visited Epping in Essex, where protesters have gathered in recent weeks opposing the decision to house asylum seekers in local hotels.

She explained: “We cannot use rules from 1995, or 2005, or even 2015 for 2025. Our world is changing very quickly, and we need to adapt to it.”

Mrs Badenoch added that “lots of people here have been talking about being harassed by a lot of people in the hotels” and continued: “Not everyone here is a genuine asylum seeker. People are arriving in our country illegally and that is why we have a plan to make sure that people who arrive here illegally are deported immediately.

“We need to close down that pathway to citizenship that means that lots of people get here not making any contributions, claiming welfare, claiming benefits. And we also need a deterrent.

“My worry is that things are actually going to get worse as Labour tries to move people out of hotels and into private accommodation – I think that is going to be a much worse situation,” Mrs Badenoch said.

Addressing the protests, Ms Badenoch said there is a “big difference” between local communities protesting “about something that’s happening in their midst” and what she termed “professional protesters – who turn up at lots of different events”.

The Tory leader said these are “not equivalent” and seemed to imply local people should have a priority over those travelling to protest.

She said: “This is your home, this is your community, and that in my view is quite important. People should have some kind of precedence in their own communities versus other people randomly passing through, otherwise we start to change the nature of what protest is.”

Ms Badenoch also alleged that “people now use protest as a cover for troublemaking”. The Daily Express on Monday revealed that ministers have set aside £500m to invest in a “new, more sustainable accommodation model” as they scramble to close 210 migrant hotels.

This “basic” accommodation, under the new cross-Government model, will be “used on a temporary basis” to house asylum seekers waiting for their cases to be processed. Under one proposal, the Government could pay councils to buy or renovate properties.

Former student accommodation, abandoned care homes, empty tower blocks and converted houses and flats could also be used to house asylum seekers.

Labour has vowed to close every migrant hotel within four years. Council chiefs have warned entire streets and flat blocks are being taken over to “exclusively” house asylum seekers.

Reform council chiefs slammed Home Office asylum accommodation contractors – Serco, Clearsprings Ready Homes and Mears – for sweeping up properties in “our most deprived communities”.

And, in an alarming admission, they claimed “whole blocks of flats or streets of new housing are not available to local people”. Communities in Thanet, Canterbury, Dover and Folkestone have all been hit hardest by this practice, the Daily Express has been told.

The letter to Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, signed by 12 council leaders, states: “The sites that Home Office contractors identify are almost always in the midst of our most deprived communities where property is cheapest and of poor quality (not meeting the standards upheld by Local Authorities), and where pressure on public services is highest due to there already being a mix of vulnerable people with competing needs in the area.

“We are alarmed that landowners and landlords are going directly to the Home Office to market units exclusively for asylum use, ensuring that whole blocks of flats or streets of new housing are not available to local people. This is effectively creating a ‘them and us’ mentality.

“Given how fierce the competition for housing is with new accommodation in short supply, this becomes very divisive and puts our local communities and public services at a disadvantage, whilst pushing up demand and ultimately housing costs.”