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Home Office drags feet on asylum support

ASYLUM-SEEKERS have been left to struggle on just £5.39 a day during the lockdown despite government promises to give them “the funding they need and deserve,” campaigners charged today.

Refugee-rights groups have repeatedly called on the government to increase the £36.95 weekly allowance for asylum-seekers by £20, in line with universal credit. 

Home Secretary Priti Patel said she would review the allowance in the light of the pandemic, while PM Boris Johnson pledged on March 25 that asylum-seekers would receive “the Home Office funding they need and deserve.” 

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