Eligible asylum seekers could access support before 2003 court case involving Keir Starmer
In the final days of Sir Keir Starmer’s government, we saw familiar posts circulating on social media claiming that the former prime minister “won the case that gave illegal migrants access to UK benefits” in 2003.
As we’ve explained before, this is misleading.
The posts likely refer to a 2003 case concerning asylum seekers in which Mr Starmer represented five claimants challenging the legal basis for the Home Office refusing financial support or accommodation to asylum seekers who had not applied for asylum “as soon as reasonably practicable” after arriving in the UK. The court ruled in favour of the claimants.
But eligible asylum seekers could already access accommodation and financial support before this case, under previous legislation. Asylum support is separate from the mainstream benefits system, and we’ve written more about it here.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as missing context because eligible asylum seekers could already access accommodation and financial support before the 2003 case involving Mr Starmer