UK Poverty Post

Government slashes support to asylum seekers

At the Refugee Council, we’ve launched a campaign calling on the government to revise its decision to cut support to asylum seekers to just over £5 per day.

From October, single asylum seekers aged over 25 will receive just £35.13 each week, a reduction of £7 on the current weekly amount. The government made this change without any consultation and announced it in a recent letter to refugee agencies.

The cut will mean that an already vulnerable and impoverished group of people will be expected to live on £5 per day. It’s unbelievable that £5 per day is somehow supposed to be adequate to cover everything a person might need while they wait for a decision on their asylum claim – food, clothing, toiletries, phone calls, travel – and everything else.

Amounts going to children, couples and 18-24 year olds will go up in line with inflation; and the review of support rates should have been an opportunity to raise rates for under 25s. However, the government decided that because supported asylum seekers are provided with accommodation that includes utilities bills, they don’t face additional costs when they turn 25, unlike other people on benefits. So, the higher rate for over 25s is to be scrapped, and a flat rate is to be introduced for all single asylum seekers.

This result is that people who start receiving support from October will have to manage on nearly £7 a week less than current rates– leaving them to survive on just a little more than 50% of standard income support rates. The situation is even worse for people who have had their asylum claims refused and receive so called ‘Section 4’ support, which provides them with accommodation and £35 per week in vouchers – this rate has remained the same for five years.

Last week, I spoke to a woman trying to manage on Section 4 ‘support’. She described to me conditions for herself and her nine-month old baby in their shared house in London. They have no living room, so must to keep to their bedroom. This is increasingly difficult now that her son has started to crawl. The house is infested with bedbugs but the washing machine has been broken for the last seven months. As she receives no cash, only vouchers she can’t go to a laundrette and is forced to wash the sheets in the bath every day.

No one should suffer these disgusting conditions. People seeking asylum come to the UK with nothing, and have often experienced unimaginable traumas, including torture, rape or other forms of violence. They deserve our help and compassion, not to be penalised and degraded. If asylum seekers who are able to work were allowed to do so, they wouldn’t be forced to rely on benefits or to live in destitution.

The Refugee Council is asking people to write to the Home Secretary, to ask him to urgently reconsider the cuts to asylum support. To take the action visit our website.