Aberdeen has seen an outsized increase in people seeking asylum supported within the city.  No Scottish local authority saw an increase in the population it supported as large as the cities, in the previous 12 months (+280), but this is partially offset by a substantial drop in the population housed in Aberdeenshire (-129) over the same time. As opposed to using this evidence to shirk responsibilities that we have assumed, in large part with the requisite empathy and compassion, it should be a point of pride that the city and region can support the most vulnerable.

We do echo calls from Westminster urging other local authorities to assume a greater responsibility in this matter to avoid situations where specific regions, case in-point Glasgow, become hotspots for anti-migrant sentiment and the destitution that is designed to occur by the system as it currently exists.

A persistent misunderstanding about the asylum system is that the local authority where an individual seeking asylum resides is responsible for funding the accommodation and support provided, and, by extension, that the recent and proposed increases in the population seeking asylum in Aberdeen will have an outsized effect on residents in the city compared to others elsewhere. They do not. The National Asylum Support Service (NASS) delivers support for individuals seeking asylum. Again, although NASS support and practice are delivered within specific local authorities, the relevant local authority does not fund or deliver them, and accommodation support is outsourced to private companies. Despite neither delivering nor funding the services, local authorities will receive a £1200 payment per person seeking asylum in their boundaries, paid quarterly.

Residents in Aberdeen will see little to no difference in how their tax money is used whether an individual is supported locally or as far afield as Derry or Devon. The idea that Aberdeen is bearing a disproportionate financial burden because it hosts a certain number of asylum seekers is not necessarily the case. A local authority may be required to support individuals seeking asylum through its own budget only when relevant social care laws are enacted in situations of destitution; however, because NASS support is designed to alleviate destitution among those seeking asylum, the relevance and cost of this potential expenditure are limited.

If anything, a move towards a local authority-led funding model is likely to create more affordable and effective support. This model is set to be piloted in certain local authorities across the UK; to our knowledge, local authorities in the North East will not be involved.

One can make the point that no taxpayer, in Aberdeen or elsewhere, spent a penny supporting the NASS. In the Home Office’s most recent accounts from 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026, profits from visa, citizenship, and immigration charges are enough to fund the entire asylum support system, with close to £1bn left over.

Regardless of whether or not that figure is subsidised completely by migrants, it is a substantial sum and one that is made much larger than it ought to be due to poor practice and a culture of mediocrity within the Home Office, factors unrelated to those the system ‘supports’.

The core problem is that the Home Office has a history of making poor decisions regarding asylum claims: taking far too long to conclude initial asylum claims (more often than not over a year) and, when doing so, rejecting individuals seeking safety whose claims are often successful on appeal (the % of appeals allowed/granted at first attempt has hovered around 50% for the majority of the 2020s). Both actions prolong a growing backlog of appellants who wait needlessly long for their claim to be heard – a list that has grown nearly 700% in the last decade.

Meanwhile, the NASS will continue to support everyone in this growing backlog, with expenses needlessly spent on individuals who likely should have been granted asylum at the first time of asking and would thus no longer require the same support.

Claims of poor decision-making are not ours alone; they reflect multiple recent studies on the topic.

• In autumn 2025, UK Visas and Immigration’s own Chief Casework Team found that 78.72% of sampled decisions “contained insufficient evidence on which to make a decision and were therefore likely to be incorrect
• In a survey of decision-makers run by the Independent Chief Inspectorate of Borders and Immigration, 83.73% of respondents believed senior managers prioritised quantity over quality
• Of the asylum refusals withdrawn by the Pre-Appeals Review Unit between January and December 2024, 74% were due to an incorrect or partially flawed decision
• The National Audit Office found in December 2025 that 42% of sampled decisions in the twelve months to May 2025 had significant or fail errors
• In 2023/24, just 52% of Home Office decisions met the department’s own quality control standards, down from 76% two years earlier

The financial consequences are direct and measurable of the poor decision-making established. The Refugee Council estimates that poor-quality initial decisions generated £276–331 million in support costs over the past year alone for people whose refusals were later overturned or withdrawn and that clearing the current appeals backlog could cost a further £974 million to £1.2 billion in accommodation and support while cases are processed

The system is also not running at a great expense because the UK is taking more than its fair share of people seeking safety. The UNHCR estimates that 117.8 million people are currently displaced; of those, 9 million (7.7%) are seeking asylum; of those, 85,891 (0.07%) are seeking asylum in the UK; of those, 6,853 (0.006%) are being supported in Scotland while seeking asylum; and, beyond that, 936 (0.0008%) are supported in the North East of Scotland.

The UK’s ‘share’ of people seeking asylum and refugees is dwarfed by countries with comparably smaller, often conflict-ridden economies like Iran, Turkey, Uganda, Chad, Ethiopia, Bangladesh and Kenya.

The system is not generous. It is inefficient. It spends too much because it makes too many mistakes. Poor decision-making by the Home Office is the single biggest driver of that inefficiency and the large running tab that comes with it. The only parties who profit from such a system do so in a literal sense: the private companies contracted to provide the NASS with accommodation to house people seeking asylum.

The profits are generous, however. Clearsprings, Mears and Serco, the private companies contracted, made a combined £380 million in profit from asylum housing between September 2019 and August 2024, equivalent to £146 in pure profit every minute for five years. Liberty Investigates found the Home Office holds no centralised data on the performance of its asylum accommodation providers and keeps no current list of subcontractors.

Hotel use has grown sharply since 2020 despite hotels costing at least six to ten times as much as HMO housing. The average annual cost per person more than doubled between 2019/20 and 2025/26, largely because of overreliance on hotel accommodation.

The Labour government has started to reduce the % of individuals housed in hotels as of June 2026. Despite this, the North East of Scotland remains a region where these types of properties characterise the asylum experience. As of March 2026, 21% of people seeking asylum were still in hotels, and in its most recent publication, the Public Accounts Committee found that the Home Office still has no credible long-term strategy to fix it.

More than poor value, the support provided through the NASS can cause harm, with many observers concluding that the system creates destitution amongst those it supports as opposed to alleviating it. Accommodation is allocated on a “no-choice” basis; those housed in Aberdeen have had no choice in their final location and can be relocated with little warning to almost anywhere across the UK.

The financial support provided is overwhelmingly not enough to live a dignified life, especially in an environment characterised by a cost-of-living crisis. People in full-board accommodation receive £9.95 per week, just over a pound a day. Those in self-catered accommodation receive £49.18 per week. Individuals who are pregnant or have a child under the age of 3 may receive an extra £5-9.5 per week. Families in the asylum system will at most receive less than 10% of what the Child Poverty Action Group suggests is required to raise a child in Scotland.

Food provision should alleviate financial and mental pressures; however, for many, this remains a recurring problem. The Scottish Refugee Council reports: “Meals are provided, but people have little choice about when or what they eat. Often the food served is unfamiliar and sometimes of poor quality. Most guests do not have access to cooking facilities. Even if they did, they can’t afford ingredients to prepare their own meals”.

The inability to do really anything productive compounds the harm. People seeking asylum are barred from working except in exceptional circumstances. They face barriers to opening a bank account and contributing to the communities they live in. Even when they build connections, these are often severed as they are moved between accommodation locations with minimal notice and no choice.

The mental health consequences are severe and documented. Doctors of the World found that 90% of people screened at one accommodation site presented with psychological distress ranging from moderate to severe, and 62% presented with severe psychological distress. Many had lived in countries with armed conflict or war (46%), experienced torture (33%), or been imprisoned or threatened for their ideas (28%). These are people who have already survived the worst. Placing them in isolated, underfunded accommodation without adequate support does not help them recover, it compounds their trauma. This is made worse as frustrations with the system are directed at its victims, not those who profit handsomely.

A near catch-all solution that would reduce the cost of the NASS while easing the financial and mental pressures on those seeking asylum would be to liberalise the right to work for people seeking asylum. The UK Government argues that restricting the right to work helps maintain a distinction between asylum and economic migration, although evidence on whether work rights act as a ‘pull factor’ is mixed.

In the UK, the right to work may be granted in limited circumstances; permission may be granted after 12 months to those who have a job offer in a role that is a highly skilled occupation (RQF 6+), which excludes occupations such as translators and interpreters, family support workers, and nursing associates. The right to work for people seeking asylum differs across Europe, but most countries generally wait half as long as the UK (6 months) and do not impose the same restrictions on acceptable roles.

The economic case for liberalisation is strong. The Centre for Global Development’s modelling suggests that permitting people to work six months into their asylum claim would be worth roughly £294 million per cohort, more than three and a half times the estimated yield of the government’s proposed £10,000 repayment charge (estimated at £82 million), once savings on accommodation, additional tax revenue, and the avoidance of long-term “scarring” effects on employment are accounted for.

Furthermore, research from November of last year conducted by the London School of Economics (LSE) suggests that revisions to the asylum system, such as day-one employability and language support in addition to all claims being processed within six months (which would allow individuals to work faster, effectively eliminating the need for change), would result in a positive fiscal contribution from every refugee of £265,788 over the subsequent 12.5 years after arrival.

The Scottish Government has repeatedly called for people seeking asylum to be allowed to work after six months, in line with the demands of the Lift the Ban coalition, of which we are a member. The current prohibition is economically irrational. It keeps people dependent on state support when they could potentially support themselves, pay tax, and contribute to the communities they live in. The vast majority of parties our elected representatives in the North East represent oppose the status quo as it costs money that could be saved and revenue that could be raised, at a time when both matter a great deal.