News

The government this week started to implement its policy of making people whose asylum claims have failed and who are unable to return home carry out unpaid community work in order to qualify for housing and benefits, writes Amy Taylor.

The Home Office put a tendering notice on the Immigration & Nationality Directorate website over the weekend for bids for government funding to run the community work programmes, which are outlined in the Asylum and Immigration Act (Treatment of Claimants, etc) 2004.

The people who will have to work are unable to return home through no fault of their own, such as there being no safe route available at the present time, and are therefore entitled to ‘hard case support’.

There are currently people receiving this in Manchester, London, Birmingham, Sheffield and Liverpool.

A Home Office spokesperson said that the scheme would initially be set up in one area on a pilot basis, but the location had not yet been decided. He added that draft guidelines on it would be published and put out to consultation later this month.

When ministers first proposed the plans in the summer, the Joint Committee on Human Rights said that they could breach the European Convention on Human Rights.