Asylum seekers to get 10% allowance rise after High Court ruling

The government will raise financial support to asylum seekers by more than 10% after the High Court ruled the current level of payments was unlawful.

Asylum seekers will now receive a "standard weekly allowance" of £45, increased from £40.85.

Lawyers for a Nigerian woman and her three children who fled domestic violence had argued she was entitled to the higher payments.

The Home Office said asylum seekers' welfare was of "the utmost importance".

With the number of asylum seekers receiving financial support at around 100,000 people, the extra cost to the public purse is about £21.7m a year, BBC News has estimated.

'Residing lawfully'

In the High Court judgement, Mr Justice Fordham wrote that his order to compel the Home Secretary to increase the basic weekly allowance was needed for "clarity and finality", not just "supervision".

Acting for the claimant, who lives in Liverpool and is known only as CB, solicitor Kathleen Cosgrove, of Greater Manchester Law Centre, said: "The case has shown that the Home Secretary has, knowingly - and for months - broken the laws set by her own Parliament and left 60,000 adults and children residing lawfully in this country, and to whom she has accepted a duty to support, with less than they need to meet essential living needs.

"CB, a young mother of young children, has battled for nine months for the Home Secretary to listen to her evidence about the impossibility of meeting her family's essential living needs."

A Home Office spokeswoman said: "The welfare of those in our care remains of the utmost importance and we continue to make sure that those who would otherwise be destitute are provided with accommodation and a weekly allowance for food, clothing, transport and sundries."

Support groups for asylum seekers have been told they will receive backdated December pay in January.