𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Asylum seekers will be forced to pay up to £10,000 towards the costs of their hotels and taxpayer-funded homes, under bombshell new plans. Migrants will face monthly bills for their accommodation, with Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood willing to deduct the cash from benefit payments.

Those given the right to work – once their asylum claims have been accepted – will also be told to begin paying back their costs. Refugees will be barred from gaining settlement rights if they have not paid back the “full amount”, sources said. Officials added: “Anyone who leaves the UK will be required to make their payments if they wish to return at a future date.”

Under the current plans, migrants are expected to pay around £10,000.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said: “The cost of asylum accommodation on the British taxpayer is too high.

“We have already reduced asylum costs by £1bn, but it is also right that we ask those who can contribute to do so.

“Receiving asylum support is a right, but it is also a responsibility. Once people can contribute and repay the generosity of the British people, we expect them to do so.”

The Government said it spent £4 billion on accommodation and support for asylum seekers last year, and the Home Office estimates the average cost per person per night of accommodating asylum seekers is £23.25 in dispersal accommodation and £144 in hotels – while subsistence payments range from £9.95 to £49.18 per person per week.

The Home Secretary will have the power to adjust the charge and the thresholds, as officials desperately scramble to slash the £4 billion bill on the asylum system.

The powers needed to recover the costs will be set out by the Immigration and Asylum Bill when it is introduced to Parliament on Tuesday.

Labour is ramping up efforts to close asylum hotels by moving migrants into houses, flats and bedsits in communities across the country – and former military sites.

While ministers publicly say they want to move asylum seekers into ex-military sites, the Home Office’s accommodation providers insist houses, flats and bedsits remain the “core” of their plans to house migrants.

Almost 70,000 asylum seekers are living in dispersal accommodation – including large HMOs.

And another 10,000 asylum seekers are set to be moved into properties in London, the southern counties and Wales, the CEO of Clearspring Ready Homes revealed.

And hundreds could be given beds in properties which are being shared with local authorities for social housing.

The Express has previously revealed how the number living in ‘dispersal accommodation’ could hit 100,000, under the Home Office’s controversial contracts with Serco, Mears and Clearspring Ready Homes.

Service User Demand Plans – which set out how many people can be accommodated in each region – allocated 114,791 spaces for asylum seekers across the country.

Some 68,151 have already been housed, with another 66,021 waiting for accommodation. The North East of England and the North West have both surged past their targets, but need to find additional homes for 2,000 people between them.

The West Midlands will almost certainly exceed its planned target, with 10,944 people expected to be housed in the region. But 9,086 are already living there, and 4,930 more are waiting in the wings.

Home Office figures show there are currently 19,779 foreign criminals living freely in Britain, more than double the 8,500 at the same point in 2020.

They have been let out into the community despite being eligible for deportation.

Ms Mahmood has pledged a 40% increase in detention capacity as the Government seeks to deport an extra 45,000 foreign criminals and failed asylum seekers over the next decade.

Detention centres at Campsfield in Oxfordshire and Haslar in Hampshire will be tripled in size to 1,000 spaces, increasing the overall capacity to 3,440 for foreign criminals and illegal migrants facing deportation, the highest number in nearly a decade.

A single appeals body will also replace the two-tiered tribunal system, where each of the nearly 90,000 cases currently takes a year to hear.

It will be staffed by independent adjudicators appointed by the Home Office to speed up the process. There will also be new powers to fast-track appeals from late claimants facing removal.