Feeding 40,000 migrants could cost taxpayers up to £2.4m a year, estimates suggest
The Home Office is set to spend millions of pounds on providing asylum seekers with ready meals, snacks, and crisps over the next three years.
The department has issued a tender for a contract to supply migrants who have arrived via Channel boats or other routes with prepared meals, sandwiches, snacks, crisps, and drinks during their asylum screening process.
The contract mainly targets "asylum intake" centres in Croydon, south London, Kent, and Belfast, but it could also extend to sites across the UK.
Asylum intake units are Home Office facilities where migrants entering the UK and seeking asylum undergo an initial screening and registration process.
In its tender document, the Home Office outlined that the contract is expected to commence in January 2026 and continue until January 2028, with an option for a one-year extension.
The specification includes catering services, snacks, prepared meals and sandwiches, vegetables, fruits and nuts, labelling machines, and meal preparation and delivery services.
While the tender document does not specify a cost, bids are invited by next month. However, industry estimates suggest it would cost between £1.2 million and £2.4 million annually to provide catering services and two meals a day to 40,000 migrants.
More than 50,000 migrants have crossed the Channel since Sir Keir Starmer won the election last summer. Over 29,000 have reached the UK via small boats, marking the highest number in the first eight months since the initial arrivals in 2018.
Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, stated: “The Home Office is forced to budget millions to feed and house asylum seekers because of Labour’s borders crisis.
“The Labour government promised to stop Channel crossings and end the use of asylum hotels, yet record numbers of dinghies full of illegal immigrants are arriving on our shores – who are then housed and fed at taxpayers’ expense. This is an insult to hard-working families struggling to make ends meet.
“Only the Conservatives, with our Deportation Bill, have a credible plan to end this issue by terminating the Human Rights Act for immigration matters and deporting all illegal immigrants immediately upon arrival. Then they wouldn’t need to be fed or housed.”
The Telegraph disclosed earlier this year that taxpayers are providing new clothes and shoes for Channel migrants at a cost exceeding £3,000 per day.
Men, women, and children arriving at Dover are provided with free clothing – including puffer coats, hats, and gloves in winter, and flip-flops in summer – at a total cost of nearly £4 million over the past three years.
The Home Office stocks a wide range of sizes and styles to replace all migrants’ clothing, deemed necessary due to the risk posed by clothing often being soaked with sea water and “occasionally” splashed with fuel.
The UK has a legal obligation under international law to provide support such as accommodation and financial aid to those in need and to offer protection to those qualifying as refugees.
The Government provides housing and a weekly cash allowance of £49.18 per person to eligible asylum seekers who are destitute or likely to become destitute.
Deputy Editor
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