Many asylum seekers received support prior to 2003 court case involving Keir Starmer
Facebook posts claiming Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer “won the case that gave illegal migrants access to UK benefits” in 2003 are circulating online, but this is misleading.
The posts likely refer to a 2003 case 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.
You can read more about this in our previous fact checks on the claim.
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 many asylum seekers were already eligible for accommodation and financial support before the 2003 case involving Keir Starmer.