Britain’s migrant welcome schemes costing an estimated whopping £38 billion over the past decade are failing in one key aspect, a damning new report has found. It warned that the significant spending has “relatively little to show” in regards to long-term social infrastructure.
The Government has been told its welcome schemes need to move from a “crisis-led, reactive provision to a proactive one”, with greater focus on the longer term required. The report by Oxford University’s Global Exchange on Migration and Diversity, titled The Future of Welcoming in the UK, said schemes in the 10 years up to 2014 have been “without an overall strategy” and “limited evaluation and assessment of value for money”. It says roughly £20billion, rising to more than £38billion when adjusted for inflation, have been spent on 26 different streams during the period.
The study, published by The National, said this is likely an “underestimate” with the actual figure expected to be even higher.
It said more than half of the amount spent was on asylum accommodation, including migrant hotels, with spending “increasing rapidly” in recent years — from around £200million in 2016 to more than £5billion in 2024.
The spending on migrant hotels during the period was described as an “overspend” and comes amid a series of protests across the country outside hotels being used to accommodate asylum seekers.
Author of the report Jacqueline Broadhead, director of the Global Exchange on Migration and Diversity, told The National that spending on the hotels over the past decade are “unnecessarily high”.
“Better planning and organisation could have reduced this sum substantially … and helped the country to invest in a longer-term and more acceptable model,” she said.
Channel small boat crossings have reached 25,000 so far in 2025 — a record for this point in the year.
The report criticised Britain’s focus on the “front-end” welcoming of migrants, with less emphasis placed on “longer term integration outcomes and community cohesion”.
It detailed how there is no UK-wide strategy for welcoming, integration and inclusion of migrants with no Government taking total ownership, with responsibility mainly split between the Home Office and Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government.
The report detailed a plan to reform the system, including the establishment of a joint integration planning group at central Whitehall level.
Ms Broadhead told The National that Labour had “taken several steps which address some of the issues highlighted in the report”.