LONDON, March 4 (Reuters) – Britain plans to strip accommodation and financial support from asylum seekers who work illegally, break the law or can \u200csupport themselves, under measures it said on Wednesday would reduce incentives \u200cfor people to enter the country unlawfully.<\/p>\n
The changes mark the latest attempt by Prime Minister Keir \u200bStarmer’s government to tighten asylum policy as it comes under pressure in opinion polls from Nigel Farage’s anti-immigration populist party Reform UK.<\/p>\n
The new measures by interior minister Shabana Mahmood draw on Denmark’s approach and form part of a wider overhaul that \u200cincludes closing asylum hotels, tightening \u2060removals and creating a one-stop appeals system.<\/p>\n
“Asylum support and accommodation will now become conditional \u2013 reserved only for those who play by \u2060our rules,” Mahmood said in a statement, ahead of a speech she is due to give on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The measures come a day after Britain imposed an “emergency brake” on \u200bsome \u200bstudy and work visas to curb what \u200bit described as a surge in \u200casylum claims from people entering through legal routes.<\/p>\n
CONDITIONAL SYSTEM TO REPLACE LEGAL DUTY<\/p>\n
Britain’s longstanding legal duty to provide support and accommodation to asylum seekers would be scrapped and replaced with a conditional system, limiting help to people who follow the rules and have no means of supporting themselves, the interior ministry said.<\/p>\n
Support could \u200cbe withdrawn from those found to be \u200bworking illegally, refusing removal, committing criminal offences, or \u200bhaving the financial ability or \u200blegal right to work.<\/p>\n
The measures, which need parliamentary approval, would \u200ctake effect in June and form part \u200bof the wider \u200bpackage the government said would tighten control of the border while maintaining protection for people fleeing conflict and persecution.<\/p>\n
The interior ministry put annual spending \u200bon asylum support at 4 \u200cbillion pounds ($5.35 billion) and said 107,003 people were receiving support as \u200bof December, including 30,657 housed in around 200 hotels.<\/p>\n
($1 = 0.7481 pounds)<\/p>\n
(Reporting \u200bby Sam Tabahriti; editing by William James)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON, March 4 (Reuters) – Britain plans to strip accommodation and financial support from asylum seekers who work…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":804371,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5018,3,4],"tags":[38827,2950,2527,232919,748,393,110068,4884,384,1144,712,60422,16,15,1764],"class_list":["post-804370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-britain","category-uk","category-united-kingdom","tag-accommodation","tag-asylum-claims","tag-asylum-seekers","tag-asylum-support","tag-britain","tag-england","tag-financial-support","tag-great-britain","tag-nigel-farage","tag-northern-ireland","tag-scotland","tag-shabana-mahmood","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-wales"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116173347690348449","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=804370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804370\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/804371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=804370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=804370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=804370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}