The Daily Mail recently ran an article: “List of perks taxpayers are funding for asylum seekers”.
The Conservative party then took that list, created a handy little graphic and then posted it on X:
REVEALED: The huge list of freebies and perks channel migrants are entitled to once they land in Britain.
Meanwhile, Rachel Reeves is taxing you for every last penny.
The Conservatives are the only Party with a plan to stop this madness.
While there’s the obvious points that EVERY SINGLE thing on that list happened on their watch, that their policies were responsible for the scale of both ‘legal’ immigration and asylum seeking we see today, and that none of their plans did anything to ‘stop the boats’, we’ll put aside our incredulity at the idea they are “the only Party with a plan to stop this madness” for now!
What I want to do is look at the list itself and do a bit of debunking, because we hear so many of these claims repeated regularly, and I think it’s useful to understand the context behind each one.
Let’s be clear, nothing on that list is entirely made up. They aren’t plucking claims out of thin air, but a big part of debunking is to look at what information you aren’t being given.
Housing and food provided directly by the state
Yes, the state has a legal obligation to provide shelter to anyone claiming asylum who has no access to any other place to stay. If an asylum seeker arrives here and has family or friends they can stay with, then they will not be housed by the State:
To receive asylum support, you will need to prove to the Home Office that you are ‘destitute’
Under the legal test (in section 98 and 95), a person is destitute if:
They do not have adequate accommodation or any means of obtaining it; or
They have adequate accommodation, but cannot meet their other essential living needs.
Asylum seekers are not allowed to work while their claims are being processed, which can take months, and sometimes years. So they have absolutely no way of supporting themselves during that time, and yes, the State have a legal obligation not to let them starve!
It's depressing that even needs explaining to some, and I certainly don’t think it’s considered a perk!
Hotel accommodation, including 3-star hotels with facilities such as free Wi-Fi, bar, restaurant, garden, and terrace
Hotels began to be used to accommodate asylum seekers in 2020, under the Johnson government, when the processing of asylum claims slowed down, allowing a large backlog to develop. Various private companies have since profited significantly from these lucrative contracts.
As for the hotels themselves, they aren’t hotels in the way most of us picture them. They are often run-down places that fail to attract paying customers, so they instead make money off asylum contracts. They are stripped of everything that one would consider ‘nice’ and are then filled with people, several strangers to a room, for months, and sometimes years. They’re often mouldy, rat-infested, and seriously detrimental to people’s health
The fact that the hotel once had a ‘bar, restaurant, garden, and terrace’ doesn’t mean those facilities are available now. Asylum seekers are not sipping cocktails in the bar to the sounds of Frank Sinatra!
Weekly allowance of £49.18 per person
Yes, the State has a responsibility to ensure asylum seekers can survive without being allowed to earn any money.
So they’re given £49.18 per person per week to cover food, clothes, toiletries, toys, travel, entertainment etc.
If they’re in accommodation that provides meals, they receive only £9.90 per week to cover everything other than food. Unfortunately, the food they are provided with can be rotten, out of date, uncooked, and generally not particularly nutritious, but on £9.90 a week, there is little scope for supplementing that food.
Which leads us nicely onto this next one….
Access to food banks
With an absolute pittance to live off, and prevented from working, food banks are often the only way for asylum seekers to access decent food.
Food banks are available to anyone facing food insecurity, and that includes asylum seekers.
There is more of a problem in that lack of information, language barriers and fear of prejudice mean asylum seekers often don’t access these services when needed.
So, we’ve covered what can be considered the essentials of keeping people housed and fed. Now we get into the bulk of the ‘perks’ claim. And what you’ll see is that context really matters for each of these!
