Home Office bans asylum seekers from buying luxury goods and services

11 comments

1. > Similarly, those in self-catering accommodation who receive £49.18 a week may find it tricky to foot the bill for flowers (also on the list).

   >basics such as audio books, toys, cards and photocopying are also on the list, along with entries to fortune tellers, carnivals and aquariums.

   What’s the fucking point of restricting purchases of cards and flowers?

2. Purely performative given that the allowances wouldn’t allow for luxury goods to be purchased in the first place.

   I’d imagine this will have the total opposite of the desired effect because opposition will ask why on earth can they afford luxury items in the first place?

3. >The internal Home Office document states: “The department has recently taken the decision to block specific Merchant Category Codes (MCCs) as a targeted measure to ensure that public funds should be used for the purpose for which they are provided: to support essential living needs. These restrictions are designed to uphold the integrity of public assistance programmes by preventing expenditure on goods and services that fall outside the scope of essential living needs – such as entertainment, luxury items and non-essential personal services.”

   How long before somebody suggests these same rules for benefit claimants?

4. I love the idea that they’re *surviving* on their allowance of £50 per week…

   Hell, I could live off £50 per week if the government paid for my food, accommodation, gym membership…etc etc etc

   Edit: as has been pointed out to me, it’s £50 if you self-cater and £10 if you don’t. Although they can apply for emergency funding from the Home Office and use charity services to get more money and resources, if they ‘need to’, like The Red Cross.

   A significant amount are working illegally to get more money, mostly in food deliveries and cash-in-hand work. Some sell drugs, some to sex-work. The government can’t reliably capture this data so academic data and some NGOs are the only attempt to provide estimates.

5. Without checking the article, I’d assume the pre-paid cards don’t allow purchases of certain items that under certain merchant category codes (MCCs) which carry a wider dragnet

6. Fight growing economic inequality? Rebuild public services? Provide greater opportunities for young people?

   NO!

   We need to punitively make the lives of a tiny number of asylum seekers worse, purely to appease a minority of people who have had their brains rotted away by anti-immigration slop on social media!

7. Yeah.

   With how much a week they actually get, what luxuries are they even buying

8. This type of restriction on what you can purchase will be all the fashion when we all have digital currency.

   It will be a form of punishment if you get caught speeding or the like – periods of bans on what you can buy and purchase.

9. A video took by some creep peeping tom filming into a bedroom of a hotel of some guys playing playstation really did a number on this country. Powder keg waiting to ignite over a £300 console split between 4 grown men. The emotional state of the country is absolutely on the floor

10. I’d be interested in what they considered luxury items because they considered period hygiene products as “Luxury” items until 2021.

11. “Government maintains data quality and basic controls”

    Idiots: “OH THE SCANDAL”

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