The Daily Express reports that asylum seekers who commit crimes will be booted out of asylum accommodation and stripped of their cash handouts under new plans. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood will revoke European laws to automatically provide arrivals with support. From June, the handouts will become 'conditional' and only given to those 'who genuinely need it and follow the law'.
Those who work in Britain's black economy will also be thrown out of taxpayer-funded accommodation, alongside foreign criminals and those refusing to leave the UK voluntarily. Some 30,000 migrants could lose their support, officials predicted. The Home Office will introduce the new legislation on Thursday, vowing the plans will 'restore order and control to our borders'.
Officials said 21,000 migrants could be granted the right to work because they have been waiting for more than 12 months for their asylum claim to be processed. Another 9,000 were caught working illegally last year. The new measures will come into force in June, officials said.
Britain will always provide refuge to people fleeing war and persecution.
Some 107,003 people are being supported by taxpayers, including some 30,657 living in asylum accommodation. More asylum seekers are living in houses, flats and bedsits across the country, new Home Office figures revealed. Some 68,538 are living in dispersal accommodation, up from 66,232 three months ago.
Labour wants to use more former military bases for asylum accommodation and convert former hospitals, student digs and office blocks into homes for migrants. They could pay councils to buy up homes across the country, which would then be leased out to asylum accommodation providers. The Evening Standard reports that Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is to introduce new legislation to overhaul Britain's asylum system as she pushes for bold action on migration to blunt the appeal of Reform UK.
She will say the Government must cut migration or risk opening the door to the right who would divide communities with the kind of anti-immigration raids seen in the US. Ms Mahmood, who faces the prospect of a backbench revolt over the plans, will argue next week that migration reform is consistent with Labour values. According to a Government source, she is expected to say Britain will always provide sanctuary to people genuinely fleeing war and danger, but the generosity of the asylum system is attracting people from across the world, funding human traffickers and encouraging false asylum claims.
But taxpayers cannot be expected to fund the lives of those who exploit the system or break our laws.
This week, the Home Secretary visited Denmark which has one of the toughest asylum and immigration systems in Europe. Denmark's Social Democrat-led government has reduced the number of asylum applications to the lowest number in 40 years and removed 95% of rejected asylum seekers. Ms Mahmood has made little secret of her admiration for the Danish approach.
Denmark has sought to deter new arrivals by largely moving from a permanent to a temporary stay model where most asylum seekers are sent back to their home country once they are deemed safe. The Home Secretary believes that unless Britain follows a similar approach, the far right will gain momentum, bringing 'havoc and chaos' to Britain's streets. Touring the Danish asylum system earlier this week, Ms Mahmood was taken to a reception centre on the outskirts of Copenhagen where asylum seekers are taken by police to stay on a short-term basis.
The migrants' biometrics are taken and they are given health checks. The Home Secretary was then taken to a returns centre where migrants go before being sent back to their country of origin. The centres, operated by the Danish Red Cross, included communal canteens and outdoor exercise machines.
She was shown accommodation which included plain rooms furnished with small single beds or bunkbeds and lockers.