Asylum Seekers Given £160 Million in Direct Debit Payments from UK Govt: Report

AT SEA, ENGLAND - AUGUST 04: An inflatable craft carrying migrants crosses the shipping la
Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
Kurt Zindulka

The UK government reportedly handed out nearly £160 million in British taxpayer money directly to alleged asylum seekers through a debit card payment system.

A freedom of information request from activist citizen journalist Steve Laws has reportedly shown that last year the government paid out £159,200,000 to asylum seekers in the under the ASPEN (Asylum Support Enablement Card), which was developed to provide supposed refugees with a subsistence income to live off of in Britain while their asylum claims are being processed.

While applying for asylum, migrants are afforded a weekly stipend of at least £40.85, access to National Health Service (NHS) healthcare, free dental care, and education for alleged children between the ages of five and 17 — all of which is paid for by the British taxpayer.

In addition to this, asylum seekers are also provided with government-subsidised housing, with approximately 40,000 migrants being put up in hundreds of hotels — including four-star venues — across the country, costing up to £7 million per day.

Commenting to GB News on the £160 million in debit card handouts to alleged asylum seekers, Tory MP James Daly said: “We spend over £6 billion a year to house asylum seekers, which is utterly preposterous. But now to find out the government is spending £ 160 million a year giving debit cards to many of those being housed in 4-star hotels beggars belief.

“Last week I was in Calais and saw first-hand how our asylum system is being abused. It is inexcusable that we are spending such large sums of money.”

The Conservative MP, who sits on the Home Affairs Committee, said that it was time to “supercharge the Rwanda policy”. However, the government itself has said that it will wait for the legal review process of the policy to play out, which they admitted will likely take until “later this year”.

The Chairman of Migration Watch UK Alp Mehmet noted the money could “pay the salaries of around 4,000 nurses for a whole year”.

However, with no prospect of taking back control of the nation’s borders and putting an end to the record waves of illegal boat migrants being brought ashore in Britain, this number will likely continue to rise.

Mr Mehmet said handing out cash would not only serve to “anger the vast majority” of the public, the government is also further incentivising illegal migrants to make the journey to Britain, with the government expecting an additional 65,000 boat migrants to land in Britain this year.

In December, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said that his government would seek to end hotel the accommodation programme for migrants and begin distributing them to military installations, holiday camps, and student accommodations. However, it is not clear when this would take place, and reports have emerged that local councils may begin seeking to pay private landlords to house migrants in order to deal with the overflow and overbooking of hotels.

In addition to local opposition to the plan, it is also unclear as to how the government would be able to monitor and keep tabs on migrants in various private homes as opposed to centralised hotels, which have also seen migrants disappear into the rest of the country and, presumably, the black market.

Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka

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