Asylum seekers’ cost to taxpayer is unknown, public auditor says
The full cost of asylum to the British taxpayer is unknown as the government has not processed data on how much local authorities spend on migrants, the National Audit Office (NAO) has said.
In a broad report mapping out asylum seekers’ journeys through the UK’s legal systems and support structures, public auditors found that there was “no single point of accountability” for the country’s failed asylum system.
It warned that frequent policy changes across the system, driven by different departments, including the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice, had stalled asylum cases, while a new crackdown unveiled by Shabana Mahmood could lead to a rise in homelessness.
Based on costs from the Home Office and MoJ on asylum, the NAO estimated total spending on asylum to come to £4.9bn in 2024-25, but the figure did not include other support costs incurred by local authorities.
The bulk of the estimate came from contracts for asylum hotels. At the same time, an additional £2.8bn in expenditure went towards supporting unaccompanied children, providing legal aid to migrants, casework, and other dispersal accommodation.
The report said total costs for hundreds of thousands of migrants who were passing through the asylum system were “difficult to calculate” given some councils and authorities often did not break down costs between groups of people in local areas.
There was also a “significant financial pressure” on authorities to provide accommodation and support for refugees who are granted asylum. There is also no estimate on the full level of costs for people who have had claims refused and appeal rights exhausted, with some receiving state support and others either being dependent on charities or families, or being destitute.
Thousands of asylum claims remain open for more than two years
The 53-page report added that transparency around data in expenditure is also a recent phenomenon, with the latest Spending Review being the first time plans for expenditure on asylum were accounted for in departmental budgets.
Auditors warned that the lack of a “complete” and “reliable” record on data around asylum seekers had been a “constraint” on the quality of decision-making across Whitehall, with errors and spreadsheet failures often damaging efficiency levels.
The NAO also took a sample of 5,000 migrants and tracked their journeys through the asylum system in early 2023. Its research showed that 41 per cent of these people had open cases where claims had not progressed and where individuals had not been removed.
A third of those cases represented individuals who were still in the UK more than two years after the last decision in their case, suggesting that there are thousands of people in the country who have slipped through the asylum system without gaining refugee status. NAO auditors said they did not look at individual cases and that some of these people could be supported by the government or may have left the country, for example.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, chair of the Committee of Public Accounts, said failure across the government had led to “taxpayers’ money being wasted” and harm to asylum seekers’ welfare.
“The current system is far from efficient, with lengthy delays and backlogs, rising yet avoidable costs, and decision making that has been both short-term and focused on counterproductive quick fixes,” Clifton-Brown said.
“If the new asylum model is to be successfully implemented, the government must take a joined-up and strategic approach to move towards a sustainable system, which improves outcomes for all. I have no doubt that more robust, better-quality data will be key.”
