Astonishing cost of asylum: Home Office confirms each claim costs the taxpayer £18,700
Taxpayers are billed £18,700 for every asylum request made in Britain, new figures emerge.
The average amount includes accommodation and living expenses, as well as the amount spent on the evaluation of claims and legal objections.
This will include those arriving on Channel small boats staying in immigration hotels, as well as less costly types of claimants, such as those arriving legally on a work or student visa and then seeking asylum with the intention of remaining in Britain.
The Home Office published the figure in background documents to the new Immigration and Asylum Bill published on Tuesday.
The papers showed the costs were based on ‘asylum claims from July 2024 to June 2025’.
This means the 93,525 asylum claims made by March will cost taxpayers a staggering £1.7bn to resolve.
There were 2,742 small boat arrivals in June, which with the same average figure would cost more than £51 million for support and processing.
However, the actual cost of dealing with different types of asylum seekers will vary.
Each asylum claim made in Britain costs the taxpayer £18,700. Picture: Small boat migrants across the canal try to board an overloaded UK-bound boat at Wissant Beach, France, on Tuesday
For example, the Home Office revealed earlier this year that supporting a family of asylum seekers costs an average of £158,000 a year.
The official ‘impact assessment’ published with the bill also revealed that more than three quarters of those who recognize the ‘right to family and private life’ under human rights laws are unemployed.
A breakdown of the claims made here under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights shows that 76 percent are unemployed.
The newspapers said that the applicants were ‘unemployed at the time of application’ and that this included ‘both those with and without the right to work’.
In a further development, the papers add that Home Affairs Minister Shabana Mahmood’s proposals to crack down on the abuse of Article 8 could even lead to a spike in asylum applications.
The document states: ‘The increase in rejected claims under Article 8 of the ECHR is likely to lead to an increase in the number of migrants requiring the involvement of the Immigration Service to leave the UK, including both voluntary and compulsory deportations.
‘As the capacity for compulsory removals is constant, it is difficult to say whether there will be an overall increase in compulsory removals.
‘But only five per cent of family and private life refusals involving Immigration in 2022 were mandatory returns.
‘Remember that increasing the number of refusals may also increase the number of people seeking asylum.’
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp described Labour’s plan as ‘minor changes that will make no practical difference’.
He said previous attempts to ‘fine-tune’ Article 8 claims ‘didn’t work’.
‘The only way to end illegal immigration is to withdraw completely from the ECHR and the modern slavery treaty, which allows the deportation of all illegal immigrants within a week of arrival.
‘Only the Conservatives have a properly thought-out plan to do this.
“These Labor ploys will not move the needle and are merely performative – just like their previous ridiculous claims to crack down on gangs,” he said.
