Up to 21,000 asylum seekers who have waited for a year for their claims to be processed could enter the labor market to support themselves, the Home Office said, as part of a package of measures to be announced on Thursday.
As the government attempts to empty asylum hotels, applicants who break the law, work illegally or are determined to have enough assets to live without support will be expelled from June and lose their support payments.
The Refugee Council has questioned these developments as risking an increase in the number of rough sleepers among those fleeing war and famine.
They come as Shabana Mahmood has responded in a column for The Guardian to demands from senior figures in the labor movement for ministers to stop focusing on migration and soften their attacks on the Green Party.
The Home Secretary wrote: “Restoring order to our border is not just an embodiment of Labor values, it is the necessary condition for a Labor government to get anything done.”
Mahmood wrote that Labour’s vision should appeal to the mainstream and be “neither Farage’s effectively closed borders nightmare nor the Greens’ effectively open borders fairy tale”. He also said the government planned to launch a new “safe and legal” route in the fall for students seeking refuge.
There are around 30,600 people awaiting asylum claims living in around 200 hotels across the UK, and 107,000 people are receiving asylum support, the Home Office said.
Currently, those in dispersed accommodation such as private homes receive £48 per week, while those in hotels receive £9.95 per person.
Authorities are trying to remove many of the 21,000 people who have been in hotels for more than a year by extending work permits.
If they find work, the intention is for them to fall into the removal of asylum support category and eventually move.
The legal duty under EU law to provide support and accommodation to asylum seekers would be revoked on Thursday, the Home Office said.
Instead, it would be replaced by a conditional approach, so that support would be reserved only for those who really needed it and complied with the law.
The measures, which will be introduced in parliament and come into force in June, would eliminate maintenance and accommodation payments to asylum seekers who work illegally, have the ability to support themselves, have the right to work or have broken the law.
The Home Office did not respond to questions about whether the 21,000 would be limited to jobs on the “immigration wage list”.
Asked by what criteria the Home Office would decide whether an individual has enough assets to survive without financial support, one source said it would be “on a case-by-case basis” and without a set threshold.
Keir Starmer and Mahmood have faced calls from across the union movement to move towards progressive policies following the Green Party’s victory in the Gorton and Denton by-elections.
Sadiq Khan, mayor of London, wrote in The Guardian: “A political strategy that takes liberal and progressive voters for granted is clearly flawed.”
“The vast majority of those thinking about voting Green are not extremists,” Khan said.
The latest announcement comes after the Home Secretary visited Denmark last week to see how immigration has been tackled, bringing asylum applications to their lowest level in 40 years.
Mahmood is following the Danish model in which the government seeks to make it less attractive for illegal immigrants to come to the UK.
He will give a speech to the IPPR think tank on Thursday outlining how these reforms are in line with his British values.
Imran Hussain, director of external affairs at the Refugee Council, said: “Forcing people into homelessness will not fix the system or deter people who have escaped torture or persecution. Instead, it is more likely to push them into rough sleeping and shift the costs onto local authorities and the NHS, making cases harder to resolve.”
