Asylum seekers could face £10,000 bill to cover costs

Asylum seekers will have to pay back £10,000 to the Home Office to cover their own housing and financial support once they start work under new plans that mirror the student-loan structure.

- HOLLY BANCROFT HOME AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT

New powers introduced to parliament yesterday by Shabana Mahmood will allow the Home Office to recover costs from adults who have been housed or who have received financial support while waiting on their asylum claim.

The money will only be extracted from those who have “sufficient” funds, the Home Office has said, but further details about which asylum seekers would have to pay and how this will happen have yet to be finalised.

Eligible adults will be required to pay off an amount each month, adding up to a total sum of around £10,000.

Charities and campaigners have criticised the plans as “performative cruelty” that fail to “tackle chronic delays in the asylum system, which is the real reason people spend years in asylum accommodation”.

Imran Hussain, director of external affairs at Refugee Council, said the plan “amounts to an extra tax on refugees”.

Zoe Dexter, housing manager at the Helen Bamber Foundation, warned it would harm the integration of refugee’s into communities, saying: “Burdening them with debt just as they begin rebuilding their lives is grossly unjust and entirely self-defeating”.

Kolbassia Haoussou, from charity Freedom from Torture, said: “As someone with lived experience of the UK asylum system, I am deeply shocked by this proposal. I struggle to see what is fair about asking some of the most vulnerable people in our society - including survivors of torture and sexual violence — to repay the cost of the support they were forced to rely on.”