The Daily Mail recently ran an article: “List of perks taxpayers are funding for asylum seekers”.
The Conservative party then took that list, created a handy little graphic and then posted it on X:
REVEALED: The huge list of freebies and perks channel migrants are entitled to once they land in Britain.
Meanwhile, Rachel Reeves is taxing you for every last penny.
The Conservatives are the only Party with a plan to stop this madness.
While there’s the obvious points that EVERY SINGLE thing on that list happened on their watch, that their policies were responsible for the scale of both ‘legal’ immigration and asylum seeking we see today, and that none of their plans did anything to ‘stop the boats’, we’ll put aside our incredulity at the idea they are “the only Party with a plan to stop this madness” for now!
What I want to do is look at the list itself and do a bit of debunking, because we hear so many of these claims repeated regularly, and I think it’s useful to understand the context behind each one.
Let’s be clear, nothing on that list is entirely made up. They aren’t plucking claims out of thin air, but a big part of debunking is to look at what information you aren’t being given.
Housing and food provided directly by the state
Yes, the state has a legal obligation to provide shelter to anyone claiming asylum who has no access to any other place to stay. If an asylum seeker arrives here and has family or friends they can stay with, then they will not be housed by the State:
To receive asylum support, you will need to prove to the Home Office that you are ‘destitute’
Under the legal test (in section 98 and 95), a person is destitute if:
- They do not have adequate accommodation or any means of obtaining it; or
- They have adequate accommodation, but cannot meet their other essential living needs.
Asylum seekers are not allowed to work while their claims are being processed, which can take months, and sometimes years. So they have absolutely no way of supporting themselves during that time, and yes, the State have a legal obligation not to let them starve!
It’s depressing that even needs explaining to some, and I certainly don’t think it’s considered a perk!
Hotel accommodation, including 3-star hotels with facilities such as free Wi-Fi, bar, restaurant, garden, and terrace
Hotels began to be used to accommodate asylum seekers in 2020, under the Johnson government, when the processing of asylum claims slowed down, allowing a large backlog to develop. Various private companies have since profited significantly from these lucrative contracts.
As for the hotels themselves, they aren’t hotels in the way most of us picture them. They are often run-down places that fail to attract paying customers, so they instead make money off asylum contracts. They are stripped of everything that one would consider ‘nice’ and are then filled with people, several strangers to a room, for months, and sometimes years. The rooms are often mouldy, rat-infested, and seriously detrimental to people’s health
The fact that the hotel once had a ‘bar, restaurant, garden, and terrace’ doesn’t mean those facilities are available now. Asylum seekers are not sipping cocktails in the bar to the sounds of Frank Sinatra!
Weekly allowance of £49.18 per person
Yes, the State has a responsibility to ensure asylum seekers can survive without being allowed to earn any money.
So they’re given £49.18 per person per week to cover food, clothes, toiletries, toys, travel, entertainment etc.
If they’re in accommodation that provides meals, they receive only £9.90 per week to cover everything other than food. Unfortunately, the food they are provided with can be rotten, out of date, uncooked, and generally not particularly nutritious, but on £9.90 a week, there is little scope for supplementing that food.
Which leads us nicely onto this next one….
Access to food banks
With an absolute pittance to live off, and prevented from working, food banks are often the only way for asylum seekers to access decent food.
Food banks are available to anyone facing food insecurity, and that includes asylum seekers.
There is more of a problem in that lack of information, language barriers and fear of prejudice mean asylum seekers often don’t access these services when needed.
So, we’ve covered what can be considered the essentials of keeping people housed and fed. Now we get into the bulk of the ‘perks’ claim. And what you’ll see is that context really matters for each of these!
Free cooking lessons
This claim stems from the fact that Cambridge City Council provides a handful of grants to community and charity groups that provide services that support asylum seekers to settle and integrate.
And some of that grant money has gone to initiatives that use cooking as a way for people to share and learn about each other’s (and our) cultures.
This is especially important for some of the women in these communities, who can face real isolation due to language and cultural barriers.
Some fantastic groups are offering these sorts of initiatives, such as Migrateful, who “run cookery classes taught by refugees and migrants on their journey to integration”
Helping people settle and integrate is a vital step in building community cohesion, rather than populist-driven mistrust and division.
HC2 certificates giving free dental care, prescriptions, eye tests, glasses, contact lenses, wigs
Anyone on a very low income is eligible for an HC2 certificate, to help with the cost of essential healthcare, and asylum seekers are no exception.
How else are they expected to pay for a prescription or some glasses on £9.90 per week?
And in case you’re wondering, the wigs are for people who have lost their hair through chemotherapy treatment, they aren’t for going out partying!
University bursaries, scholarships, and fee waivers for asylum seekers
Asylum seekers are allowed to go to university, but they can’t access any government funding or loans like British kids can. They also have to pay foreign student fees, which can be up to £38,000 per year.
So some universities chose to provide support for them. This doesn’t impact anyone else and is not funded by the taxpayer.
Discounted Spanish or French lessons from some councils
This claim stems from Richmond council, which provides a Richmond Card, that offers access to leisure facilities and discounts on some classes and activities for its residents.
It costs £27 per month for most people, £11 for students, pensioners and carers, and is free for anyone claiming a range of benefits, including Jobseekers Allowance, Universal Credit and Disability Allowance. It is also free to sanctuary seekers and people in emergency accommodation, which includes asylum seekers.
So yes, there is a council that offers discounted Spanish and French lessons to everyone who lives there, and asylum seekers (and everyone on benefits) can access this discount for free.
You can see why context matters with these types of claims!
Free bus travel from some councils
While free bus travel is not available for all asylum seekers, some councils do offer free bus travel to allow better access to healthcare and immigration appointments, etc.
You have to keep bringing to mind that they have no means of earning money to pay for transport, and £9.90 per week doesn’t stretch far.
Of course, other groups also benefit from free bus travel, such as pensioners and young children.
Free driving lessons from several councils
Long-term subscribers might remember I did a whole article on this one in May!
You can go and read that article; otherwise, the TLDR is that this was unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in care, getting treated the same as British children in care, by a council that offers care leavers help with driving lessons.
There were also 15 Afghan Refugees in Cherwell, who had all been translators, drivers, etc, for the British army during their time in Afghanistan, who each received a £1000 grant to support their integration into British life. One of the things they could use that money for was driving lessons.
Free sports and leisure tickets/trips
I couldn’t find anything specific on this beyond what was in the Daily Mail article:
Bristol City Council has offered asylum seeker trips to watch football games at Bristol City and Bristol Rovers and matches at Gloucestershire County Cricket Club – all courtesy of government funding.
I am going to make an educated assumption that this relates to one of two scenarios:
- Bristol council will have provided a grant to an organisation that has, at some point, taken some asylum seekers to see a Bristol Rovers game as part of a community cohesion program.
Or
- Children in care were taken on a day trip to do something nice, and one of them may have been an unaccompanied asylum-seeking child.
I’m happy to be corrected if anyone knows otherwise!
Free PlayStation consoles and yoga sessions
This came from a Telegraph scoop:
The Telegraph can reveal that in 2022, the Tory-run council of West Sussex used £334 of its funding to buy PlayStation consoles and games for new arrivals in a “hotel setting”. The council also paid £496 for yoga sessions for those in hotels.
That’s right, from West Sussex council’s annual £2.2BILLION budget, they spent a whopping £334 on PlayStations and £496 on yoga sessions.
£334 is the cost of one PlayStation console!
One PlayStation, in one hotel (presumably containing children) by one council, gave the Telegraph this headline:
Free swimming, group exercise classes, and gym sessions
And
Discounts on theatre shows
I’ve put these together as they’re basically the Richmond Card again.
But this time in Bradford.
It’s called a Bradford Leisure Card, it costs £3 per year and is available to anyone who lives in Bradford who is a student, a pensioner, anyone on any benefits and …….. asylum seekers.
It offers:
- reduced price admission to all normal public swimming sessions
- free admission and equipment hire and half price activity charge with up to seven days advance booking at sports centres
- half price for games of bowls, tennis, putting and pitch and putt
- discount at Doe Park Water Activities Centre
- discount at the Alhambra Theatre and St George’s Hall
Home Office ‘clothing packs’ on arrival
Another Telegraph article following a Freedom Of Information (FOI) request.
In it, the Home Office explained:
The Home Office stocks thousands of different sizes and shapes to replace all the migrants’ clothing, which it says is necessary because they are often soaked through with seawater and “occasionally” splashed with fuel, posing a health and safety risk.
They are provided with a basic clothing pack similar to those issued via the Prison Service, consisting of underwear, socks, T-shirt, trousers/jogging bottoms, sweatshirt and weather-appropriate footwear such as flip-flops/sliders, plimsolls or trainers.
In colder weather, a coat, hat and gloves are included in the clothing pack. Children are also provided with age and weather-appropriate clothing packs, and – where necessary – nappies are also provided for babies.
Basically, when someone washes up on our shores, soaked to the bone and splashed with petrol, they are taken to a warehouse and given one complete dry set of clothes and a pack of nappies if there’s a baby.
That’s it.
One set of clothes, when they have nothing but the soaking clothes they stand up in. Any other clothes they get have to come from their £9.90 per week….
Free mobile phone on arrival
Also from the same Telegraph article, the Home Office explained:
“It has been the case since 2018 that some very basic (non-smart) mobile phone devices have been issued to a small number of arrivals on an exceptional basis for reporting purposes, where it was considered necessary to ensure that ongoing contact was maintained with the Home Office.
However, this is not a regular practice, and we hold no central data of the number of occasions on which it has occurred since 2018.”
Taxpayer-funded legal aid for asylum cases
The asylum process is incredibly difficult to navigate, with intricate legal procedures, paperwork, and deadlines, which can be hard to understand, especially for those unfamiliar with the legal system of a new country, let alone those with language barriers to overcome.
Asylum seekers can rarely afford any legal assistance themselves, so the State provides legal aid to help. However, changes in the system mean legal aid is becoming harder to come by, and many asylum seekers are being left with no legal support.
In a just and fair system, people should be able to make their claim, with appropriate representation to ensure a swift and justified outcome for everyone.
The Process
So, you’ve seen what happens….
Right-wing journalists trawl council budgets and fire off FOIs to find something, anything, that looks like money being spent on, or for the benefit of anyone who might possibly be an asylum seeker.
This includes finding out what support children in care receive, and then splashing that across their headlines as an asylum ‘perk’ because they know that unaccompanied asylum-seeking children are also in care.
Oxford County Council paid for a trip to the funfair for their looked-after children? “Taxpayers fund FUNFAIR TRIPS for ASYLUM SEEKERS” screams the headlines.
The purchase of a single PlayStation becomes an ACTUAL Telegraph story with a headline implying this is either universal or, at the very least, widespread.
The Daily Mail has then pulled all of these ‘outrage’ stories together into one piece on the ‘perks’ available to asylum seekers.
The Tory party – the party that oversaw everything on this list – then turns that into their own propaganda piece.
And I know you know this (because you’re here, reading my work!), but no-one is crossing a continent and at least one sea for discounted cinema tickets and the chance of a free cookery lesson!
The summary
- Yes, the State has a responsibility not to let asylum seekers starve and live on the streets in destitution.
- Yes, asylum seekers are given support with healthcare if needed, as are British people on low incomes, and some essential travel
- Yes, some councils chose to support asylum seekers with integration and community events
- Yes, unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in care are treated the same way as British children in care, and that sometimes means they go to the fun fair
- And yes, some councils offer discounted leisure facilities and classes to anyone on benefits, pensioners, students AND asylum seekers
There is NOTHING in that list that any compassionate human being should take issue with if they stopped and thought about it. If they remembered that we’re talking about other human beings with the same feelings, needs and fears as the rest of us.
But populist politicians and the media want to dehumanise asylum seekers. They don’t want you to consider the context or realities behind these claims.
My faith in humanity is continuously dented when I have to debunk these things, and when I read the comments of those who genuinely don’t want asylum seekers to be fed or housed.
But then my faith returns when I get sent messages like these:
“I can confirm that asylum seekers get free sports. We have two, from Iran and Iraq respectively, who play in goal in our over-50s games. We don’t charge them because how the f*** are they going to pay twice-weekly £5 match fee from £9 a week living allowance? And also nobody else wants to go in goal!😆”
So keep the faith and the next time you see these lists, remember: most of it is either legal obligation, common-sense support, or tabloid spin.
Don’t fall for the outrage bait – context matters.
This article originally published on Emma’s Substack: Monk Debunks.
