Over 6,000 asylum seekers have used taxpayer money intended for food and clothing to fund their gambling habits, reports suggest.
The Home Office has launched an investigation into the findings (Image: Getty)
Asylum seekers are using British taxpayers’ money to fund their gambling habits, with over 6,000 caught doing so in the last year, it has been reported. Migrants used pre-paid cards intended to cover basics, including food and clothing, to place bets in bookmakers, amusement arcades and casinos, Home Office data shows. Over the last year, 6,537 asylum seekers used the Government-issued cards for gambling, the information released as part of a Freedom of Information request has revealed.
It comes amid growing pressure on the Government to end the use of taxpayer-funded asylum hotels, with demonstrations breaking out in Essex, Norfolk and London after a 38-year-old migrant was charged with sexual assault. This week, protestors clashed at the Britannia Hotel in Canary Wharf after it emerged that asylum seekers would be housed there.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said: “It is shocking that over 6,000 illegal immigrants have attempted to use hard-working British taxpayers’ money to gamble.
“They have illegally entered this country without needing to – France is safe, and no one needs to flee from there,” he told Politics Home.
“The British taxpayer has put them up in hotels, and now they slap us in the face by using the money they are given to fund gambling. These illegal immigrants clearly don’t need the money they are given if they are squandering it at casinos and arcades.”
The pre-paid ‘Aspen’ cards are given to asylum seekers to cover basic costs while they wait for their claim to be heard. This process can take weeks, months, or even years, with tens of thousands of cases in the Government backlog and growing numbers appealing rejected claims.
Migrants living in self-catered accommodation receive £49.18 each week to spend on essentials such as “clothes, footwear, non-prescription medicines, travel, food, non-alcoholic drinks, toiletries, laundry and toilet paper”.
The Home Office data, revealed by the Mail Online, which tracks where the cards were used but does not have the power to block transactions, showed that an average of 125 asylum seekers spent their money at “gambling-related merchants” each week during the 12-month period.
A man gestures next to a police officer during a protest outside the Brittania hotel (Image: Getty Images)
A protester shouts to a group of counter-protesters outside the Britannia International Hotel (Image: PA)
The numbers peaked at 227 in one week at the end of November last year – with migrants thought to have withdrawn cash from outside gambling venues to circumvent measures preventing the cards being used to directly place a bet.
Paul Bristow, Conservative mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, said it was “not unusual” to see migrants who arrived in the UK on small boats in the region’s betting shops.
“Peterborough has seen a huge increase in the number of gambling establishments and gaming centres, and a huge increase in men who’ve arrived across the Channel on small boats,” he said.
“It’s not unusual to see the very same men in some of the establishments on a Thursday, Friday or Saturday night. There’s something going on here. Questions need to be asked. It would be absolutely wrong if they were using money given to them by British taxpayers to waste on gambling or in adult gaming centres.”
The Home Office said an investigation had been launched into the use of Aspen cards, and explained that it has “a legal obligation to support asylum seekers, including any dependants, who would otherwise be destitute”.
