Asylum seekers would have right to work - Davey

Sir Ed Davey says allowing asylum seekers to work would mean they would be "contributing" to society

The Liberal Democrat leader says his party would give asylum seekers permission to work while they wait for their claims to be processed.

In an interview with BBC South East, Sir Ed Davey said they "could be contributing to their local economy", rather than costing the taxpayers money.

Sir Ed was speaking ahead of the Liberal Democrat conference which begins in Bournemouth on Saturday.

He also said the government should move asylum seekers out of hotels.

"The way you do that is by processing applications much more quickly than the government have done, and the Conservatives who created the mess in the first place managed to do," Sir Ed said.

"Then people who've got no right to be here can be deported, and people who have a right to be here can go leave the hotel and go and work and get on with their lives."

'It's illegal'

In 2002 the previous Labour government withdrew permission for asylum seekers to work, saying it was necessary to distinguish asylum from economic migration.

In May, MPs rejected a Lib Dem amendment to the government's immigration bill, which would have allowed asylum seekers to apply for work after waiting three months for their application to be processed.

Sir Ed also advocated providing help to refugees abroad, to remove the need to come to the UK.

He said: "If we used our aid budget we could help people in refugee camps near their homes, near their countries that they've fled from, so they could stay in their regions.

"We need to stop illegal immigration. It's illegal. And if we did that, we could actually meet our traditional British approach, which was to be a sanctuary from people who are escaping torture."