£4.7 billion spent on asylum support in 2023-24, representing less than 0.5% of all government spending
The National Audit Office (NAO) last week published an overview of the Home Office's spending and performance for the year 2023-24.
Image credit: UK GovernmentYou can download the 27-page report here.
The report provides an overview of how the Home Office is structured and where it spends its money. It includes figures on the Home Office's spending on immigration and asylum.
In 2023-24, the Home Office's total spending reached £27.7 billion, which was offset by generating £5.8 billion in income. As shown in the table below, £9.3 billion was spent on departments managing asylum, migration, visas and passports. Visa and passport fees also generated £5 billion for the Home Office, representing the vast majority of the department's income.
| Departmental group | Gross expenditure | Income |
| Asylum Support, Resettlement, and Accommodation | £5.4bn | 0 |
| Borders and Enforcement | £1.9bn | £0.06bn |
| Customer Services (Visas & Passports) | £1.6bn | £5.0bn |
| Migration and Borders Group | £0.4bn | £0.002bn |
| Total | £9.3 billion | £5.062 billion |
As the NAO report states, the Asylum Support, Resettlement and Accommodation group spent £4.7 billion on asylum support in 2023-24, with most of that money (£3 billion) spent to house asylum seekers in hotels. Due to hotel costs, the figure is approximately 31% more than the £3.6 billion spent on asylum support in 2022-23.
Tax Policy Associates, which works to increase the public understanding of tax, noted that there is widespread misunderstanding of tax and spending. A recent opinion poll by Portland found that 27% of the population and 24% of Labour 2024 voters wrongly believed that migrants and asylum seekers were one of the top three items the government spends the most on. As the Standard highlighted yesterday, the actual figure of around £4bn represents only 0.3 per cent of total government spending.
Some helpful and informative excerpts related to asylum and migration from the NAO's report follow below:
National Audit Office
An Overview of the
Home Office
for the new Parliament 2023-24
October 2024
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© National Audit Office 2024
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7 Spending patterns within the Home Office
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Home Office spend on asylum support in 2023-24
In 2023-24, the Home Office spent £4.7 billion on asylum support, of which £3 billion was spent on housing people seeking asylum in hotels – an average of £8 million per day. This is compared to a total of £3.6 billion spent on asylum support in 2022-23, of which £2.2 billion was spent on hotels.
The Spending Review settlement in 2021 was recognised as insufficient to support those currently in the asylum system. HM Treasury agreed to additional funds of £1.5 billion as part of the 2024-25 Main Estimate. In the Annual Report and Accounts 2023-24, the Home Office had an approved budget of £2 billion for asylum support and resettlement for 2024-25, which is £3.4 billion less than it spent in 2023-24. This budget is being reviewed in the forthcoming autumn Spending Review, and as in recent years, the Home Office may also request additional funding from Parliament through the Supplementary Estimates process.
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11 Asylum: managing the backlog
The Migration and Economic Development Partnership with Rwanda
In April 2022, the Home Office announced the Migration and Economic Development Partnership (MEDP) with the Government of Rwanda as a measure to deter small boat crossings. Under the agreement the UK government provided development funding to Rwanda and would meet the processing and integration costs for each relocated person. The partnership fell under the former government's third country asylum processing provisions, under which individuals who claimed asylum in the UK could have their claim declared inadmissible if they had previously been in, or had another connection to, a safe third country where they had or could have claimed asylum. In these circumstances they could be returned to that country or removed to another safe third country willing to receive them. In July 2023, the Illegal Migration Act was introduced, placing a duty on the then Secretary of State to remove adults who arrived in the UK via various irregular routes.
In March 2024, our Investigation into the costs of the UK-Rwanda partnership set out that under the partnership the Home Office would pay a minimum of £370 million to the Rwandan Government and then further amounts depending on the number of people relocated. As at February 2024, the Home Office had paid £240 million to Rwanda, with a further payment of £50 million planned for April 2024.
On 22 July 2024, the Home Secretary announced that she had informed the Rwandan Government that the UK would be ending the partnership.
Asylum application backlog
The government has promised to resume processing asylum decisions for those previously considered as inadmissible. Under the former government, the Home Office was not processing cases for people who had arrived after 7 March 2023 (as these cases were subject to provisions under the Illegal Migration Act 2023). By the end of June 2024, there were about 86,000 outstanding asylum claims awaiting an initial decision.
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12 Asylum: ending the use of hotels
The Home Office supports destitute people seeking asylum while it makes a decision on their asylum claim. In 2023-24, the Home Office spent £4.7 billion on asylum support, including £3 billion on hotels. This is compared with £3.6 billion on asylum support and £2.2 billion on hotels in 2022-23. The Home Office intended to reduce the use of hotels and reduce costs to the taxpayer, by opening large sites, increasing room-sharing and increasing dispersal accommodation.
Developing large sites
The Home Office proceeded with four large sites: the Bibby Stockholm Barge in Portland, Dorset; former RAF bases at Wethersfield, Essex and Scampton, Lincolnshire; and student accommodation in Huddersfield. By the end of March 2024, only Wethersfield and the Bibby Stockholm were accommodating people. The Home Office expected that the other two sites would start to accommodate people from April 2024 (Scampton) and May 2024 (Huddersfield), but, in September 2024, the Home Office announced it no longer planned to use the site at Scampton and has made no further announcements regarding Huddersfield. In July 2024 the Home Office announced that the contract for the Bibby Stockholm would not be renewed past January 2025.
Our March 2024 Investigation into asylum accommodation report found that, in rapidly progressing plans to establish large sites, the Home Office had incurred nugatory spending and increased risks. We concluded that, collectively, the four sites would cost more than the alternative of using hotels.
Reducing hotel use
The Home Office announced that by the end of March 2024, it had stopped using 109 hotels and had reduced the number of people accommodated in hotels from a maximum of 56,000 in September 2023 to around 36,000 by March 2024.
Our July 2024 report, The effectiveness of government in tackling homelessness, set out the wider pressures local areas are facing in light of increasing demand for asylum accommodation.
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13 Migration
Moving through border security
In 2023, the Home Office reported it had met its targets of clearing 95% of European Economic Area (EEA) passengers entering the UK through border control within 25 minutes and 95% of non-EEA passengers in 45 minutes. In the first quarter of 2024 it reported it had exceeded its target, clearing 98%. Border technology has experienced a number of issues, including nationwide failure of e-gates in May 2024. We most recently reported on the management of the UK border in our May 2024 report, The UK border: Implementing an effective trade border.
Processing visas
The number of visas the Home Office grants for work or study purposes has increased since 2020 to almost 1.2 million in the year ending March 2024.
In April 2024 the Home Office changed the rules for family and work visas by:
• removing social care workers' rights to bring dependents;
• increasing the baseline minimum salary for sponsored skilled workers;
• reducing the list of jobs for which individuals can be sponsored for skilled worker visas at a reduced minimum salary;
• increasing the minimum income to sponsor someone for a spouse/partner visa; and
• reviewing the graduate visa system.
Provisional numbers suggest that applications for skilled worker and health and social care worker visas between April and July 2024 have dropped by 51% compared with the same period in 2023. We are currently undertaking an audit of the Home Office's management of skilled worker visas, due to publish in spring 2025.
Processing passports
Our December 2022 Investigation into the performance of HM Passport Office (HMPO) looked into HMPO's response to the surge in demand for passports. HMPO has subsequently improved its customer contacts, built capacity to better manage demand and continued its digital transformation. As a result, customer experience has improved and HMPO has saved money by reducing "failure demand".
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14 Asylum and migration: future challenges
Controlling irregular migration
In July 2024, the Home Secretary outlined the following plans:
• A new Border Security Command: Bringing together the work of the Border Force, the National Crime Agency, the small boats operational command and intelligence and security officers, aimed at stopping the smuggling gangs facilitating the small boat crossings.
• Returns Transformation Programme: Replacing the Migration and Economic Development Partnership with Rwanda with a programme to return individuals with no legal right to stay in the UK, to their home country.
• Resume processing asylum decisions: By the end of June 2024 there were around 86,000 outstanding asylum claims awaiting an initial decision, which will now be considered.
Asylum appeals
The number of appeals against asylum decisions has increased, increasing the caseload for HM Courts and Tribunals Services (see Figure). As of March 2024, the number of appeals in the first-tier tribunal chamber stood at 27,133 compared with 7,510 at March 2023.
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Impact of Home Office spend on Official Development Assistance (ODA)
In 2023, around 28% (£4.3 billion) of the total ODA budget was spent on in-donor refugee costs (money spent supporting refugees within the donor country) (see Figure). The Home Office is the highest non-Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office spender of ODA. It spent nearly £3 billion of ODA in 2023 (19% of the total ODA spend). Most of the Home Office's ODA spend was on supporting people seeking asylum in the UK.
Our June 2023 report, The asylum and protection transformation programme, concluded that the more the government spends on in-donor refugee costs, the less is available to support development overseas.