By Editor,Richard Marsden,Ross Clark

Copyright dailymail

It’s been quite a welcome for the new Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, appointed by the Prime Minister on Friday with an instruction to step up the Government’s efforts to stop small boat arrivals.

On Saturday, her first full day in office, 17 dinghies arrived on the shores of Britain carrying a staggering total of 1,097 migrants.

Meanwhile, we are still waiting for the first migrant to be returned to France under the new ‘one in, one out’ scheme. And the burden on Britain’s hard-pressed exchequer is growing day by day.

In 2024, it took an average of 413 days to reach a decision on initial asylum applications (down from 735 days in 2023). So, for more than a year after they set foot in Britain, new claimants – who are barred from working – are completely dependent on the state.

Let’s take a look, then, at how much Saturday’s huge crop of 1,097 arrivals will cost the British taxpayer both now – and well into the future.

THE FIRST-YEAR COSTS

This is by some distance the main cost incurred by new arrivals, although the true total of what is being paid for housing is uncertain.

According to the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), putting a roof over the head of adult migrants cost an average of £41,000 per head in 2023/24.

For the 30 per cent of adult migrants kept in hotels, the expense was greater than average at £145 per night or £52,925 per year. Child migrants are housed by local authorities at almost the same cost: £143 per night or £52,195 a year.

We don’t know exactly who arrived on Saturday, of course – and might never know. So, to calculate how much the Government will be spending on them, we have assumed they will fall into the same pattern as previous channel crossings this year.

This means that 18 per cent – or 197 – of the migrants will be under 18 and 900 will be adults.

On this basis – using the most comprehensive figures available – Saturday’s arrivals will cost a total of £57.96million.

Yet according to the Home Office, the average hotel bill per migrant is actually falling to £119 per night or £43,435 a year – although this is yet to be tested by any independent research.

Moreover, ministers promise to go further and cut the overall accommodation bill by £1billion, or 21 per cent, by using fewer and cheaper hotels.

A 21 per cent reduction in the average cost of housing asylum seekers would bring the price per head down to £32,400 a year.

Even if the Government does achieve this huge reduction, however – and it’s a major ‘if’ – Saturday’s 1097 arrivals will still cost the taxpayer £35.5million in housing costs in the course of the next 12 months.

Food and spending money

The 30 per cent of migrants assigned to hotels – where meals are provided – each receive £9.95 in spending money per week.

The rest, who live in shared houses – or houses in multiple occupation (HMOs) – get £49.18 per week for food and other expenses.

Applied to Saturday’s migrants, this would give us a yearly bill of £2.13million for food and other expenses.

According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the National Health Service(NHS) spent an average of £3,300 per person in Britain in 2022/23. That would work out at £3.62million for our 1,097 migrants in the course of the next year.

But asylum-seekers also receive free dental care, eye tests and other services which most British citizens have to pay for.

With NHS dental care costing £90.90 per treatment (including check-ups) and the average adult registered with a dentist receiving two treatments per year, Saturday’s arrivals will cost £181,000 to keep their teeth healthy.

Asylum-seekers are also entitled to free sight tests and prescription glasses on the NHS (while most others have to pay). An NHS sight test costs £23.53 and a pair of single vision glasses £75.85.

Even without eye tests, the total cost of healthcare for Saturday’s arrivals over the next 12 months will be £3.48 million.

Migrants are allowed legal advice for their initial applications to remain in Britain and lawyers are remunerated with a flat fee of £559 per case (recently increased from £413).

That works out at £613,000 for our 1,097 new arrivals in the first stage of their attempts to claim asylum.

Should they appeal – and 43 per cent of failed applicants do – they are allowed further legal aid, with standard fees of £274 for a ‘stage 2a’ appeal and then £685 for a ‘stage 2b’ appeal.

These appeals are likely to take place in the second, third or fourth year of an asylum seeker’s stay in Britain.

In the year to June, 52 per cent of applications were initially rejected.

If, when it comes to Saturday’s arrivals, 43 per cent of those who failed to mount an appeal (the average percentage so far this year) and incurred both appeal fees, they would add a further £168,000 to the bill.

The total cost of legal aid in the first year alone for Saturday’s arrivals – with no appeals – would be £613,000

Swimming lessons

Councils are provided with an asylum grant of £1,200 per asylum seeker to cover incidental expenditure.

There has been criticism that in some cases this includes free swimming lessons, cookery classes and other perks.

These special asylum grants mean Saturday’s arrivals are adding a further £1.3million to the first year’s cost.

Based on previous experience, 197 of Saturday’s newcomers are likely to be classed as children.

They will have to be sent to state school at an average cost of £8,210 each per year – that’s an extra £1.6million from a stretched education budget.

THE YEAR’S RECKONING

After just one year in Britain, the 1,097 who stepped off the boats on Saturday will have cost the taxpayer at least £44million and probably much more.

LONG-TERM COSTS

After about 15 months or so, Saturday’s migrants will have their asylum applications decided. At that point some – perhaps many – will no longer be classed as asylum seekers.

How many? In the year to June, 48 per cent of initial applications were accepted (although many more may succeed on appeal –another expensive process for the taxpayer as we have seen.)

This in turn means we could expect 527 of Saturday’s arrivals to be granted indefinite leave to remain in Britain following their first application, and 570 to be rejected.

As for the 527 who successfully claim asylum, they will at least be allowed to work to support themselves. But they will also retain their right to NHS care and will gain eligibility for housing benefit, Universal Credit and other welfare payments.

After ten years of paying National Insurance contributions, they will be eligible for the state pension.

Will Saturday’s migrants ever earn their keep through the taxes they contribute? That depends how well they do in life. If some do become entrepreneurs, say, or highly qualified medics, they might well bring a net benefit to Britain. Many of the newcomers, though, will never earn enough to cover the benefits they receive.

Recently, using figures from the Office for Budgetary Responsibility (OBR), the Centre for Policy Studies(CPS), worked out the overall cost if 801,000 migrants were granted leave to remain in Britain between now and 2030.

Even using what the CPS calls it calls the Government’s ‘extremely optimistic assumptions’ about migrants’ potential earnings, it calculated that new arrivals would eventually cost Britain a collective £234billion. That’s an astonishing £292,000 burden imposed, on average, by each asylum seeker.

Spread out over many decades, this expenditure would include claims on the state creaking pension system when today’s migrants reach retirement age, of course.

Even deporting people is expensive. It is unlikely that any of Saturday night’s arrivals will be returned swiftly, but even if they were deported immediately, the Exchequer would be on the hook.

Under a voluntary scheme run by the Home Office, failed asylum-seekers can be paid £3,000 for agreeing to leave Britain – not a bad haul. Between 2021 and 2024, 13,637 migrants took advantage of this scheme – costing taxpayers £40,911,000.

Moreover, there were administration charges on top. The government paid the company administering the scheme a total of £53.8 million – just to get rid of people.

THE LONG-TERM BILL

Using these figures, Saturday’s 1,097 arrivals will eventually cost the British taxpayer £154million – the equivalent of 750 new homes or two new schools.