Shabana Mahmood is a really horrible person whose policies are cruel. She’s one of the worst people in the Labour administration and should be fired immediately.
Asylum seekers in the UK are generally not allowed to work while they are waiting on a decision on their claim. If they have been waiting for more than a year, then they can apply for permission to work.
As a result, they are reliant on the Home Office for housing and support as they cannot work to pay for accommodation.
Marley Morris, associate director at the IPPR, said there are “better ways of bring down” costs of asylum such as “speeding up asylum processing and appeals, reforming the existing asylum contracts”.
Given what they’re paying for the hotels, probably. That shit ain’t cheap and was a racket from the start.
Personally I’m all for giving them an NI number ASAP and letting them work. They didn’t trek halfway across Europe to sit in 2 star hotels in shithole towns getting exploited by traffickers on Deliveroo… They want to work. Some of them are working regardless, just illegally and for far less than minimum wage.