Across the EU and the UK, asylum seekers receive relatively similar benefits – typically less than £10 a day to cover food, clothing, toiletries, phone costs and travel.
Mihnea Cuibus, a researcher at the University of Oxford Migration Observatory who has done a comparative study of countries including the UK, Germany and the Netherlands, said that “broadly it comes to about £50 or euros a week”.
Charities say this puts asylum seekers below the poverty line, with the British Red Cross last year spending £220,000 to provide clothes for 12,000 asylum seekers in the Manston short-term holding facility in Kent.
Shorts
This month, an Afghan asylum seeker, identified as FB, successfully sued the Bavarian district of Schweinfurt in Germany on the grounds that he didn’t have sufficient clothing. His asylum application had been deemed inadmissible and he had been waiting to be transferred to Romania, which activists said meant his cash benefits were reduced or withdrawn under German law.
