Braverman acted unlawfully by withholding £3 a week from asylum seekers, court rules

Home secretary failed in her duty by failing to provide pregnant women and children enough money for healthy food

Suella Braverman breached her duty as home secretary by failing to provide asylum-seekers – including pregnant women and young children – with sufficient support while waiting for their claims to be determined, the High Court has ruled.

The Royal Courts of Justice heard on Friday that Ms Braveman acted unlawfully in withholding £3-a-week payments for healthy food for pregnant women and children between the ages of one and three while in the care of the British state.

The legal challenge was brought by five asylum-seekers, three of whom complained delays in providing financial support risked breaching their human right to be free from degrading and inhuman treatment.

The other two individuals challenged Home Office failures to make the payments while they were living in hotel accommodation.

The ruling by Lord Justice Swift means the Home Office “must now start making these payments to the thousands of pregnant women and people with children under three years old in hotels without delay”, legal firm Deighton Pierce Glynn, which represented some of the claimants, said.

Asylum-seekers are barred from paid work during their first year in the UK, and cannot receive benefits, instead receiving accommodation and a general rate of £47.39 a week in support.

The Home Office, therefore, has a legal duty to provide them and any dependants with appropriate support, including £3 each week for pregnant women.

On Friday, Lord Justice Swift ruled that delays in the system meant that the home secretary’s decision to provide this support only in the form of full-board hotel accommodation, rather than in cash, was unlawful.

Suella Braverman was found to have breached her duty of care to asylum-seekers (AP)

The court also found that the Home Office’s failure to provide emergency interim financial support to those waiting for a decision on their application for such support was unlawful.

John Crowley, an associate solicitor at legal firm Leigh Day, said: “It cannot be right that people legitimately seeking asylum are made to suffer such degrading treatment. It is time for the Home Office to abide by its legal duties and rectify this wide-reaching problem.”

The first asylum-seeker represented by the firm, known as K, is a single mother from India with a five-year-old child, who left her husband as a result of domestic violence. She and her daughter lived with her friend but had no money to meet their basic needs, so applied for “subsistence only” support in January 2022.

While the Court has now given guidance that decisions should ordinarily be made within 10 days, the Home Office did not grant her application until August 2022, and only after the issue of a judicial review claim challenging the delays.

She tried to get emergency financial support so that she could buy food but was told she would have to move into a hotel, which she feared would unsettle her daughter, and was an unnecessary expense.

A view of the Bibby Stockholm accommodation barge, which will house up to 500 asylum seekers in Dorset (Andrew Matthews/Pool Photo via AP)

The second asylum seeker, known as NY, is a single father of two children, aged 14 and nine, who suffers from serious medical conditions. After a delay of 11 weeks, the Home Office accepted he was destitute and granted him accommodation and financial support in May 2021.

However, it then failed to provide accommodation for seven months and financial support for a year. The third claim was by an 82-year-old disabled female asylum-seeker from Pakistan known as AM, who applied for accommodation and financial support in November 2021. Despite calling numerous times, and pointing out that she was about to be made homeless, she was told that her documents had not been received.

She was forced to re-apply multiple times and eventually launched legal action last October. After denying that it had ever received her documents, it transpired on the day before the final hearing in February 2023, that the Home Office had received AM’s documents in June 2022, Leigh Day said.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “We are considering the court’s findings and will respond in due course.”