Blunkett to stop migrants working

David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, will today unveil plans to strip thousands of asylum seekers of the right to work while their claim to stay in Britain is being assessed.

The news angered refugee groups which claimed that the Home Secretary was condemning vulnerable people to "dependency and poverty".

Mr Blunkett has acted after complaints from politicians in France that the right of asylum seekers to work is acting as a major "pull factor" in encouraging migrants to try to reach the United Kingdom.

The Home Secretary is expected to tell the House of Commons today in a written answer that he is ending the concession that allows asylum seekers to take a job after six months if they have not been given an initial decision on their claim to stay.

But Nick Hardwick, chief executive of the Refugee Council, claimed that the current average time for an initial asylum decision is 13 months.

He said thousands of asylum seekers will face destitution without the right to work.

He said: "This is an extremely short-sighted move by the Government, and a punishment on asylum seekers for the Government's failure to meet its own targets. Let's not forget that the reason asylum seekers are allowed to work after six months is because successive governments have failed repeatedly to make asylum decisions within their own targets of six months."

But the Home Office is believed to regard the concession, introduced during the Eighties during a backlog, as "increasingly irrelevant" because 80 per cent of applicants are given an initial decision within six months.