Costs and benefits

19 November 2024

Government hasn’t introduced policy of ‘free bus fares for immigrants’

A false claim circulating on social media says that the cap on bus fares has increased to £3 as a result of the policy.

21 August 2024

Estimate of £400,000 cost per asylum seeker based on the Netherlands, not the UK

A figure used by Robert Jenrick MP refers to a study which estimated the lifetime net cost of asylum seekers in the Netherlands, not the UK.

31 January 2023

Aspen card does not give asylum seekers £175 a week

Not every asylum seeker is eligible for support payments, and those that are receive much less than has been claimed on Facebook.

31 October 2022

Claims about 47,000 homeless veterans need context

The figure is the estimated number of homeless veterans in 2015 in the United States. We don’t know how many homeless veterans there are in the UK.

22 May 2020

How much have healthcare workers paid through the immigration health surcharge?

The Prime Minister claimed £900 million had been raised by the surcharge, but there was some confusion as to whether he was only referring to contributions from health workers.

18 September 2018

EU immigrant workers in the UK: five things we learned

The independent Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) today released a report about the impacts of EU immigrant workers on the UK economy, and recommendations for how immigration policy should change.

25 May 2018

What does immigration do to wages?

It depends who you are.

19 April 2018

4,000 EU prisoners in England and Wales

There were 4,000 EU nationals in prison in England and Wales at the end of 2017, and over 9,000 foreign prisoners overall. It’s not easy to determine the cost of these prisoners to the taxpayer.