Ali Ahmadi, Catherine Barnard and Fiona Costello consider the government’s proposal to ask refugees to repay around £10,000 towards asylum support that they received while their claim was being processed. The look at how it would work in practice, how much it would contribute to asylum costs, as well as its impact on asylum seekers. 

The government’s Immigration and Asylum Bill proposes that refugees will be asked to ‘repay some of our generosity’ by making a flat-rate ‘contribution’ of about £10,000 towards asylum support (i.e., accommodation and financial support) they received while their claim was being processed. The sum must be paid off in full before a refugee becomes eligible for settlement.

So how will it work? How much, if anything, will it contribute toward the cost of getting asylum and how will it affect asylum seekers and refugees?

The proposal is light on specifics. It will be at the Home Secretary’s discretion to set the charge and the income threshold at which repayment kicks in. There is no clarity about whether the flat rate will be applied not only to those who received financial support and accommodation but also to those who received financial support (£49.18 per week) but not accommodation during their claim.

According to the Home Office, the repayment will apply once a person is earning enough to pay instalments without being pushed into destitution. This raises the thorny issue of refugees and employment. Asylum seekers cannot work for the first year of being in the UK and only in limited circumstances after that. For those granted refugee status, Home Office data for 2015-2023 shows that only about one quarter were employed during the first year after receiving refugee status. From the second year onwards, the employment rate stabilised at roughly 50%. Of those in employment, 37% (i.e., less than one fifth of all refugees) were in full-time jobs eight years after being granted status, with a median annual income of around £23,000. These figures are likely to include refugees who did not receive asylum support because they were financially self-sufficient during the asylum process. In the year ending March 2026, more than 28% of people awaiting an initial asylum decision or appealing a refusal were not receiving asylum support, although it is unclear how many of them were working.

Among those who do find work, earnings stay low. The median income for employed refugees aged 16-64 reached only £13,000 after eight years of receiving their refugee status. By comparison, the UK’s median salary was £34,963 during the same period. This is also evident in the number of refugees on Universal Credit (UC). In December 2024, about 66% of those who received their refugee status in the last five years were on UC. Therefore, it is difficult to see how many refugees will meet the threshold for repayment, let alone make any meaningful contribution towards the costs of the asylum system (the Home Office spent £4.8bn on asylum support in 2025).

Further, those who did not get asylum will also be asked to repay the cost of any asylum support they had previously received before they can seek any other kind of visa to come to the UK (e.g., study, work, tourist). It is impossible to estimate how many would have the will or the financial means to make such repayments.

Refugees remain out of the labour market for a variety of reasons including limited social network, language barriers, and mental health challenges. Similarly, employment bans imposed on asylum seekers for at least the first year of their application cause de-skilling, with long term consequences for getting work. The longer asylum seekers are barred from working, the more difficult it becomes for them to secure employment after receiving their refugee status. A study from Germany found that asylum seekers who experienced longer waiting periods before receiving permission to work were less likely to find employment within five years, and it took nearly a decade for this employment gap to disappear. Conversely, lifting employment bans and faster asylum processing procedure are accompanied by improved employment outcome.

Poor-quality initial decision is also costly. Incorrect refusals push many genuine refugees into appeals, prolonging their reliance on asylum support. At the end of March 2026, more than twice as many people were receiving asylum support as were waiting on an initial decision (97,519 compared with 48,758), indicating that a large proportion of those in receipt of asylum support were awaiting the outcome of an appeal. About one-third of asylum appeals are successful at the First-tier Tribunal. By March 2026, a total of 87,450 cases (related to about 114,000 people) were waiting an average of 67 weeks for an appeal. Therefore, improving the quality of initial decisions would do more to reduce asylum costs.

The repayment scheme could be highly consequential for refugees. Because it is linked to eligibility for settlement, many refugees may be unable to secure settlement for decades, if at all. Evidence suggests that most refugees will not earn enough, at least within the first decade of living in the UK, to repay the sum. This will likely be exacerbated by the temporary refugee status announced in March this year, under which refugees’ leave to remain is reviewed every 2.5 years and it takes refugees up to 20 years to settle (previously, refugees were eligible for settlement after 5 years). Research shows that residency restrictions often impede refugees’ ability to start employment. This, in turn, would make it harder to make the repayment, contributing to a vicious cycle of unemployment and ineligibility for settlement.

The measure may also discourage some asylum seekers from claiming asylum support knowing that it creates a future debt that delays settlement, even when they genuinely need it. That could leave vulnerable people more exposed to homelessness, and/or illegal, exploitative working conditions. Some may also decide that their declared earnings accelerate repayment, and instead remain in insecure or illegal employment rather than entering the legal/formal labour market.

To conclude, the proposed repayment scheme is unlikely to make any meaningful contribution to public finances. However, the impact on refugees’ ability to settle, integrate and become economically self-sufficient could be significant. If the aim is to reduce the long-term cost of the asylum system, better alternatives, as we discussed before, would be to lift the ban on asylum seekers’ right to work and ensure high-quality initial decision-making. These would save money for the Home Office and enable refugees to support themselves, contribute through tax, and improve their economic integration.

By Ali Ahmadi, Research Associate, University of Cambridge and PhD student at Anglia Ruskin University, Catherine Barnard, Senior Fellow, UK in a Changing Europe & Professor of EU Law and Employment Law, University of Cambridge and Fiona Costello, Assistant Professor, University of Birmingham.

Keir Starmer gave his final address as PM outside No 10 on Monday morning (Alamy)

3 min read8 min

Starmer gave his final address outside No 10 Downing Street on Monday morning, ahead of former Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham replacing him in office in the afternoon. 

“For all the focus on individuals, politics will always be a team sport, and the changes we’ve delivered for our country and our party belong to everyone who has fought for them,” Starmer said. 

“I thank them again today, and I thank the British people for the opportunity to serve. I go with good grace, I go with a smile, and I go proud of everything that we have achieved.”

He said he was “confident” that Britain is now “stronger and fairer” than it was before Labour entered government in 2024.

“Our economy is stronger,” he said.

“Our public services are on the up, with the biggest fall in waiting times for 17 years. Children are being lifted out of poverty every single day. Immigration is down significantly. Our defence and security are on a far stronger footing, and our international reputation is greatly enhanced.”

He also highlighted his achievement of securing a landslide election win for the Labour Party in the 2024 general election.

Describing “everyday immeasurable acts of resolve, grit, decency, and compassion from people who serve our country”, Starmer made a call for national unity among “different people under our common flag”.

“We face a world now where our enemies will stop at nothing to divide us, because of our values, our freedom, our decency, and frankly, because of our unflinching resolve towards the brave people of Ukraine,” he continued.

“And so, under this attack, it is vital that we remember the greatness of the Britain all around us.”

The outgoing prime minister wished Burnham well in taking over the premiership, and said he had his “full support”, before thanking his family, his staff, the civil service, and “everyone who has supported our efforts along the way”.

As Starmer spoke, his key staff, allies and supporters stood behind him and along Downing Street. His wife Victoria Starmer, Chancellor Rachel Reeves, Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy, Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government Steve Reed, Attorney General Lord Richard Hermer, and Starmer’s top advisers Sophie Nazemi, Ben Nunn, and Amy Richards were among those surrounding him by the front door to No 10.

Following the speech, Starmer headed to Buckingham Palace to meet the King and offer his resignation as PM. 

How much sleep was linked to higher dementia risk?

More research is needed

3 min read20 min

Social care, welfare reform, and the governance of artificial intelligence and digital technologies are among the defining policy challenges of our time. They are very different issues, but they share something in common. They demand more than another review, consultation or parliamentary statement. They require an enduring national settlement.

That should encourage us to think not only about the decisions we make, but about how we make them.

Politics has always involved disagreement. It should. But too often our modern politics rewards the performance of disagreement over the practice of solving problems. A relentless news cycle, social media and the rhetoric of permanent campaigning too often reinforce that instinct.

Point scoring becomes easier than problem solving.

Recently, I had the privilege of leading one of the government’s most ambitious People’s Panels on a major area of public policy. New prime ministers are entitled to change policy. Clear priorities make for better governments. What stayed with me was not simply the policy under discussion, but what the People’s Panel taught us about consensus building and the future of policy making when problem solving, not point scoring, becomes our starting point.

The People’s Panel brought together 120 people from across every nation of the United Kingdom, selected to broadly reflect the country we serve. They arrived with different experiences, different assumptions and strongly held views. Some were instinctively supportive. Others were openly sceptical. That diversity was not an obstacle. It was the point.

Over several weeks, they heard evidence, challenged assumptions, questioned experts and wrestled with genuine trade-offs. Nobody expected unanimous agreement.

The lesson was not that disagreement disappeared. The lesson was that disagreement became productive.

We did not ask people to think alike. We asked them to think together.

That feels like an increasingly rare thing in public life.

People who began from very different places found common ground not because differences were ignored, but because they had been aired honestly, challenged respectfully and worked through collectively. Consensus was not engineered. It was earned.

Watching that process reinforced something I have come to believe. When we are all given the time to hear evidence, challenge assumptions and deliberate together, consensus becomes far more achievable than our politics often suggests.

Representative democracy remains the foundation of our country. Governments govern. Parliament decides. A People’s Panel does not replace those responsibilities. It strengthens them by helping build the public legitimacy that our biggest national settlements demand.

It will not be right for every decision. Nor should it be. But where the choices are profound, trade-offs unavoidable and the consequences felt across generations, this approach has real value. Not only in shaping better policy, but in rebuilding confidence that politics is capable of listening before deciding.

Policies will change. Governments will change. Priorities will evolve. They should. But if government discovers a better way of bringing people into the difficult decisions that shape our country’s future, that is something worth keeping.

Tony Wilson famously said: “In Manchester, we do things differently.” It was more than a slogan. It reflected a confidence that original thinking often produces better answers than familiar habits.

Perhaps that is the mindset we now need for some of our oldest national challenges.

If we want to restore faith in politics, we should spend less time asking how politicians can persuade people of their answers and more time trusting people to help shape them.

Because the public do not always expect politicians to have all the answers. They do expect us to ask the right questions and trust them enough to help answer them.

That is how we build stronger national settlements. That is problem solving, not point scoring.

James Frith is Labour MP for Bury North