Britain spent a staggering £5.4billion on support for asylum seekers in the last year, shocking new research has indicated. A Labour Party analysis pinpointed what it described as an “eye-watering” £4.3billion overspend on asylum support.
The Home Office budget for 2023/24 allocated £1 billion to ‘asylum support, resettlement and accommodation’ to cover the cost of supporting individuals whilst their asylum claim was being processed.
However, due to escalating cost and the failure to keep on top of the backlog (which currently standing at almost 100,000 cases), additional claims pushed total annual expenditure up to £5.4 billion, or just over £15 million every day.
By the end of March, the overspend will reach £5.9 billion, when factoring in an additional £500 million for Afghan resettlement schemes, according to data contained in official documents.
Yvette Cooper MP, Labour’s Shadow Home Secretary, said: “This lays bare the complete chaos the Tories have created in the asylum system. They are spending billions on hotel rooms because of their failure to clear the backlog of asylum applications.
“Despite promises of action from the Prime Minister, they have not delivered and now the Home Secretary has been forced to go to the Chancellor with a begging bowl because he’s bust his budget by over £5 billion.”
Ms Cooper added: “Families across the country, struggling with the cost of living crisis, will rightly want to know why the Prime Minister and Home Secretary are spending millions of pounds every day on asylum accommodation, rather than getting a grip of the problems they’ve created by letting the backlog spiral out of control.
“Labour has set out a clear plan to save billions of pounds for the taxpayer by ending asylum hotel use, recruiting over 1,000 new case workers and 1,000 returns staff to fast track safe country cases, process asylum applications more swiftly, and return those who do not have a right to be here.”
The £5.4bn mentioned by Labour includes not just asylum support but also resettlement.
Asylum support covers hotels, dispersed accommodation, alternative accommodation sites, and support payments.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “The number of people arriving in the UK has reached record levels and has put our asylum system under incredible strain.
“Tackling the issue of illegal migration requires bold, innovative solutions – our partnership with Rwanda offers just that.”
Separately, more than 128,000 people were waiting for an initial decision on their asylum application at the end of last year, figures released today showed.
The number was down by more than a quarter on the record high reached in June last year, when more than 175,000 people were awaiting a decision.
The statistics published by the Home Office on Thursday also confirmed the backlog of older asylum cases – which can equate to more than one person – in the system had not been cleared by the end of 2023, despite a claim to the contrary from the Prime Minister.
The latest figures show that as of December 31, there were 3,902 legacy cases – those where applications were made before the end of June 2022 – awaiting an initial decision.
In total, 29,437 people crossed the English Channel in 2023, 36 percent lower than the record 45,774 crossings the previous year.
