Letter: Refugees in poverty

Sir: Campaigners have good reason to be worried about the health of asylum seekers when a Home Office minister defends the Immigration and Asylum Bill with the claim that about half of them receive cash benefits equivalent to 90 per cent of income support (Right of Reply, 11 June).

The actual figure, announced by the Home Secretary in a parliamentary written answer, is pounds 90 a week - pounds 50 in vouchers and pounds 40 in cash for a family of four. That is 66 per cent, not 90 per cent, of their current income support level of pounds 135. One hundred per cent is not enough to keep an indigenous family healthy. Research by the Family Budget Unit has shown that a couple with two young children in the UK need pounds 164 a week to cover essential needs, good health, satisfactory standards of child development, social inclusion and human dignity.

Last autumn the Inquiry into Inequalities in Health reported: "People whose incomes consist entirely of state benefits have insufficient money to buy items and services necessary for good health."

By providing asylum seekers with only 66 per cent of an income support which is already so very inadequate, the state is deepening the oppression it inflicts on the poor. The consequence is very expensive poverty-related ill health, crime, divorce, debt and low educational achievement.

The Rev PAUL NICOLSON

Chairman of Trustees

Zacchaeus 2000 Trust

Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire