The real asylum bill, and what migrants pay in.
The real asylum bill, the welfare budget it gets confused with, and what migrants pay in. Both sides of the ledger, so you can judge for yourself.
39 figures, each with its official source.
NAO estimate (Home Office + MoJ). Does not capture all local-authority costs.
Driven up by backlogs keeping people in expensive support longer.
Of which ~£2.7bn accommodation, ~£220m cash support, ~£247m council grants.
Self-catering rate, per person, on a pre-paid card. Asylum seekers cannot claim mainstream benefits and generally cannot work.
Reduced rate where accommodation includes meals.
~£122 per person per day. A small slice of total cost.
Main means-tested benefit for low-income & out-of-work households, incl. many in-work families.
PIP + DLA + Attendance Allowance etc. Mostly disabled UK residents & pensioners.
Includes the UC housing element (~£20.6bn). Low-income UK tenants incl. pensioners.
Disability benefit, not means-tested; asylum seekers cannot claim it.
Near-universal payment to families who are UK/settled residents.
Estimate, localised since Council Tax Benefit was abolished in 2013, so no single official total.
Paid upfront, per person per year, on top of taxes, before using the NHS.
Surrendered to the Exchequer to fund the NHS.
Many fees set above cost to cross-subsidise the system.
≈£3.0bn fees + ~£2.6bn IHS + ~£0.6bn Immigration Skills Charge.
Projected lifetime net present value per main applicant (excl. Health & Care). 'Clearly fiscally positive'.
Cumulative to state pension age for a representative average-wage migrant. Low-wage migrants are net-negative; high-wage far higher.
Net of ~£4.4bn public-service costs (£41.9bn gross). Sector-commissioned estimate.
HMRC/DWP do not record nationality when administering tax, so no official total exists, any headline £ figure is a model.
About £7 a day on a pre-paid card for ALL essentials (food, clothing, toiletries, travel, phone).
Where accommodation includes full board (e.g. hotels).
Provided free to the asylum seeker; the provider pays council tax Home Office procures 'no-choice' accommodation via contractors (Mears, Serco, Clearsprings), who meet council tax and utilities. Asylum seekers pay no rent and are not liable for council tax.
Cannot work while the claim is pending (narrow exception only after 12 months) So they earn little/no income and pay little/no income tax or NI, a key driver of the net cost.
VAT on some spending; almost no income tax (work ban) 20% VAT on standard-rated items from the small allowance, but food and children's clothing are zero-rated. Negligible fuel duty (most don't drive).
A net cost, by design (the work ban + slow processing), not by generous payments Barred from working and mainstream benefits, small cash allowance, provided accommodation, little tax paid.
Hotel figure is ~£144.98. Borne by the taxpayer, not the asylum seeker. Hotels are the expensive minority, where most of the cost sits, not in the cash allowance.
After a grant, people can work and do, rising from ~24% at grant to ~48% by year 8, still below the ~73% UK-born rate (partly the lasting scar of the work ban).
A projection over the ten-year term of the three provider contracts, more than three times the £4.5bn originally estimated in 2019. Rises with asylum intake and hotel use.
The projected cost has trebled, an overrun of roughly £10.8bn, driven by higher intake and reliance on hotels as contingency accommodation.
A hotel bed (~£145) costs about six times a dispersal bed (£23.25). Hotels house ~35% of people but soak up ~76% of contract cost, moving 1,000 people out of hotels saves roughly £44m a year.
Combined reported profit of Clearsprings, Serco and Mears since the contracts began in 2019: Clearsprings alone ~£187m (about half). Average margin ~7%. Public money became private profit while the service was widely criticised.
Five contracts breached profit caps seven times (2019–2024). Only ~£45.9m recovered so far, around 12% of the ~£383m profit. The Home Office has few levers to control contractor profitability.
Less than 1% of supplier revenue was deducted for underperformance since 2019, about 1/95th of the profit the same firms made. Weak leverage over quality.
£715m on the Home Office's own itemisation (incl. £270m to Rwanda's development fund and ~£50m on flights that never flew); the NAO had earlier costed the partnership at ~£700m. It removed no asylum seekers, only four went voluntarily, i.e. roughly £179m per person. Same receipt at #/promises.
The former HMP Northeye was bought for £15.4m, more than double what its owners paid a year earlier, then found to need £20m+ of repairs. PAC cited it as a symptom of a 'dysfunctional culture' at the Home Office.
56% of tracked claims still unresolved after ~3 years Of 5,000 claims tracked ~3 years: 35% granted, 9% removed, 56% unresolved, and 41% refused-but-not-removed, generating 'significant' ongoing support costs. Slow caseworking, not the £7-a-day allowance, is what runs up the bill.
42% of sampled initial decisions had significant or 'fail' errors, driving avoidable appeals and rework, after the Home Office relaxed recruitment to clear the backlog.