Give Asylum Seekers Right To Work to Reduce Spend on Migrant Hotels, Lib Dem MP Says
Brian Mathew MP wants to see more efficient spending on asylum seekers (Alamy)
3 min read
The government should let asylum seekers work while they await a decision on their case, a Liberal Democrat member of the international development committee has said.
Brian Mathew, the Liberal Democrat MP for Melksham and Devizes, said asylum seekers should be given the ability and support to work "instead of leaving them in administrative limbo in hotels around the country costing the taxpayer millions".
Last week, Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced that defence spending would rise to 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2027, with some of the increase coming from a cut to UK's overseas aid budget.
While there has been cross-party consensus on the need to bolster UK defences, the government has been criticised, including by some Labour MPs, over the decision to reduce Official Development Assistance (ODA) from 0.5 per cent of gross national income to 0.3.
Anneliese Dodds resigned as international development minister over the move.
In her letter to Starmer, the senior Labour MP warned that the cut would make it "impossible" to maintain current levels of support for aid recipients like Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine.
Labour MP Sarah Champion, chair of the international development committee, was due to lead a House of Commons debate about the decision on Wednesday.
Other MPs have called on the government to protect the reduced aid budget by no longer spending it on in-donor refugee costs – the costs of supporting refugees and asylum seekers in the first year they arrive in a donor country, including hotels.
Aid spending on asylum seekers and refugees in the UK rose to £4.3bn in 2023, making up 28 per cent of the aid budget.
In the same year, the Home Office spent £2.5bn on asylum accommodation.
Under current rules, asylum seekers are not usually allowed to work while waiting for the government to make a decision on their claim. Instead, the government provides those seeking asylum with accommodation and support to meet their "essential living needs".
There are some exceptions. For example, Home Office guidance states that it may grant asylum seekers whose claim has been outstanding for more than 12 months permission to work.
Mathew said making it easier for asylum seekers to enter the workforce would help "free up" what remains of the aid budget.
"If [asylum seekers] have the chance to work and pay their way into our society, instead of remaining a burden on the exchequer and a burden to themselves, it would free up a large part of the remaining aid budget that could then be spent improving lives in the developing world so that people do not need to risk their lives to come here in the first place," he said.
He added that electronic tags and DNA records could be used to protect asylum seekers "from the clutches of human trafficking and modern slavery".
A government report published earlier this year suggested that a pilot scheme forcing asylum seekers to wear ankle tags to track their locations "did not affect compliance".
Mathew also suggested that the approved industries for asylum seekers to work in could include agriculture "where employers are crying out for labour".
After being sworn in as the new US president, Donald Trump ordered a pause on almost all foreign aid for 90 days to undertake a review of efficiencies and cost-saving.
On Tuesday, the international development committee heard that the withdrawal of aid was already causing panic and the announcement by the UK had exacerbated it.
In 2021, during the Covid pandemic, the then-Conservative government reduced the spending target for ODA from the UN target of 0.7 per cent of gross national income to 0.5.
When Labour entered office it committed to restoring the 0.7 target as soon as economic conditions allow.
Starmer described the decision to further reduce aid spending as not one he was "happy to make", adding that the need to raise defence spending would require some "extremely difficult and painful choices".
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