No evidence U.K. winter fuel allowance is being cut to fund asylum budget

The context

A graphic claiming to show how much the U.K. spent on the "asylum budget" in the U.K. from 2019 to 2024 has gone viral on X. Above the graphic is a note saying that the asylum budget is now nine times higher than five years ago. The post, published by Richard Tice, deputy leader of the Reform Party, also suggests a correlation between the asylum seeker budget and the winter fuel allowance budget. "Now British pensioners know where their winter fuel allowance is going … Paying ever more for asylum seekers as the boats keep coming," he writes in the post, which has been viewed by 358,000 users so far.

However, Tice's post is misleading - the data he cites is incorrect, and there is no evidence to support the claim that a reduction in the winter fuel allowance for pensioners mirrors the alleged increase in the asylum budget.

In fact

Tice's post contains a graphic by a think tank called Facts4EU.Org. The University of Oxford has labeled Facts4EU as a "junk news source" in its reports, and other fact-checking organizations have also labeled their research as false.

The graph was originally included in a report, which Facts4EU.Org described as a "revelation" of how the Home Office budget for just "one element of the overall cost of the migrant crisis has risen more than nine times in the last five years." They also claim that "this budget has increased by 2.5 times in the last two years alone." 

Facts4EU.org alleges the figures in the graph in question fall under the Home Office's Asylum Support, Resettlement, and Accommodation (ASRA) budget. "The ASRA budget covers the running of the asylum system as well as delivery of refugee resettlement programmes. Whilst the precise definition has changed over the years, in the latest figures for 2023-2024 the cost of "tackling illegal migration' shows £6.6bn, indicating an increase of 840%, and of 140% since 2021-22." 

However, the data from this survey, which was then translated into a graphic, is not accurate. As a result, Tice's post, which purports to show how the asylum budget is increasing, is also misleading. 

"We do not recognise these figures," a Home Office spokesperson told Logically Facts. "Prior to the 2022/23 published reports, Asylum Support, Resettlement and Accommodation costs were not exclusively separated from other Home Office costs and therefore it cannot be traced back before that year. However, this means that saying there is a 9 times increase and a 2.5 times increase is incorrect."

Are asylum costs rising?

The closest figures we could find to those quoted in the survey and graphic appear in a House of Commons document titled "Estimates Day: The spending of the Home Office on asylum and migration." However, even these differ from what is shown in the viral graphic. They also show an increase in the budget, but it is less significant. "The ASRA budget covers the running of the asylum system as well as delivery of refugee resettlement programmes. Over the last five years it has increased by 733%, and by 110% since 2021-22," the House of Commons writes, along with the graph below.

As ASRA's budget has not always been separated from other Home Office expenditures, precise figures on how the amounts allocated to ASRA have changed are not available. However, it is possible to see how the total actual cost of dealing with asylum seekers in the U.K. has changed. Based on the official data, we can conclude that these costs are increasing, but not in the way that the graphic shared by Richard Tice shows. 

The actual costs are reflected in the Official Development Assistance budget, an increasing proportion of which is spent in the U.K., referred to as donor refugee costs (IDRC). Under international aid rules, many of the costs of hosting refugees can be counted towards the aid budget for the first 12 months that refugees are in the U.K. This includes elements of support that fall within the ASRA budget such as food and accommodation.

"A growing amount of U.K. aid has been spent on U.K.-based refugees, with spending increasing from £410 million in 2016 to £4,297 million in 2023 (rising from 3.2 percent of the aid budget to 28 percent). The Home Office was responsible for £2,937 million of this aid spending in 2023. Most support for refugees went towards providing food and shelter. Other aid, such as on scholarships and administration, is also spent in the U.K. In 2022, this totaled £775 million," according to the analysis by the House of Commons.

The House of Commons analysis also shows that in recent years all U.K. IDRC expenditure has been incurred in the U.K. In 2023, a small amount of U.K. IDRC expenditure (less than £100,000) was incurred in other donor countries. The figures relate to spending by the previous Conservative government and have been heavily criticized by members of the newly elected Labour Party ahead of the 2024 election. 

Are cuts to pensioners' fuel budgets due to increased costs for asylum seekers?

Chancellor Rachel Reeves recently announced a package of measures to plug a £22 billion hole in public finances that she said had been "papered over" by the Conservative government. Among the measures was the surprise scrapping of winter fuel payments, a government levy on pensioners to help with heating bills. 

However, the abolition of the winter fuel allowance was independent of budget increases. The budget for asylum seekers has increased over the last five years, even when the winter fuel allowance was still in place. In addition, the asylum budget increased under the previous Conservative government, and the withdrawal of support for pensioners only took place under the newly elected Labour government. Therefore, it is inaccurate to connect the two decisions made by two different governments, whose decisions cannot be causally linked.

"There is no substance behind the claim that a rise in asylum costs means a decrease in the fuel allowance - that is not how budgets work," The Home Office told Logically Facts. "Richard Tice is commenting on inaccurate data and it is not the way budgets work that because more money is being spent in one area it is the direct result of less money being spent in another."

The verdict

The research and graphic referred to in Tice's post are based on inaccurate data. There is also no evidence that there is a link between the cut in winter fuel payments and the increase in the asylum budget. As a result, we have identified Tice's post as misleading.