The government’s top immigration adviser has urged ministers to lift the ban on asylum seekers getting a job while they wait for their claim to be processed.
Professor Brian Bell, chairman of the Migration Advisory Committee, said they should be allowed to work after six months of waiting for their claim to be processed.
He said it would save taxpayers money by reducing the cost of subsidising their accommodation and living costs and help refugees to integrate into society.
Labour adopted the same proposal while in opposition but ditched the policy after entering government and now argue that allowing asylum seekers to work would create a further “pull factor” that would fuel more illegal migration to the UK.
Asylum seekers are allowed to work only if they have been waiting for the outcome of their claim for more than a year.
They are also allowed to work only sectors that face shortages, such as social care, construction and welding.
They are allowed to volunteer but this must be unpaid. Instead, the government meets their basic needs such as accommodation and food if they would otherwise be destitute. Taxpayers subsidise the living costs of about 110,000 asylum seekers in the UK, including more than 35,000 in hotels at a cost of more than £4 million a day.
Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, is understood to be planning to set a new standard goal of processing all initial asylum claims within six months but has not set out a time frame for introducing the policy.
Bell said that if the government could not process an asylum seeker’s claim within six months, then it was only reasonable to allow them to enter the workforce. He pointed to statistics showing that the majority of asylum seekers remained in the UK either by being granted asylum or through the government’s failure to remove them, so it made sense to allow them to work.
The immigration adviser told The Times: “If you’re not managing to process claims for years, then the fact you can’t let them work is a real problem. If all decisions were being taken by six months, then the right to work becomes irrelevant. If the government is taking the right approach and processing sped up, then it wouldn’t matter.
“I still think something like a six-month period would be reasonable to restrict work rights, and then if your claim hasn’t been processed then there’s a strong argument from an immigration perspective and it would be good to get them into the workforce earning money.
“We know that most of them are going to be accepted, most will stay anyway and if we want them to be successful in integrating in society, we know their English will get better if they are working.”
Labour has dismissed Bell’s proposal, saying it would fuel more migration.
A government source said: “Lifting the ban on asylum seekers work would only increase the pull factor of coming to the UK.
“We’d be playing into the hands people smugglers who could use it as a sales pitch – ‘come to the UK and claim asylum and you’ll get a job and free board in a hotel’”.
More than 60 per cent of all outstanding asylum seekers have been waiting more than six months for their claim to be processed.
The latest statistics show that in September there were 133,409 asylum seekers awaiting an initial decision on their claim, of whom 83,888 have been waiting for more than six months and 49,521 less than six months.
Enver Solomon, chief executive of the Refugee Council, said asylum seekers offered Britain a significant amount of talent and in-demand professions.
Solomon said: “Refugees are doctors and nurses, engineers and computer scientists. They are people with a huge amount to give to Britain, and they want to do just that.
“If we want refugees to play a part in our country, to contribute to our communities and rebuild purposeful lives, then we need to give them a fair shot: that means giving them the right to work, and making the most of their skills and abilities.”
The Conservative party said it backed the existing policy.
Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, said: “It’s bad idea to allow asylum seekers to work. They have typically entered the country illegally, often by small boat from a safe country — France. They’re coming here by choice, not because they are fleeing danger in France.
“If we allow people who have entered the country illegally to work, it increases the illegal immigration pull factor. It would also make a mockery of our work visa rules if those rules could just be circumvented by paying a people smuggler to put you in a rubber dinghy.”
Labour backed the idea of allowing asylum seekers to work while in opposition. In December 2022 Stephen Kinnock, who is now a health minister, cited warnings from the Migration Advisory Committee that the ban was exposing asylum seekers to exploitative conditions such as modern slavery.
The Conservative Party said it backed the existing policy.
