Delivery bikes outside hotels prove only one thing: The ban on work for asylum seekers must be lifted

“Taking us for a ride”, screams one headline. “Caught red handed” asserts another. The crime that’s been uncovered? People delivering takeaways. Images snapped outside hotels housing people seeking sanctuary show bikes bearing bags from popular food delivery apps, alleging that residents are paying to use profiles to enable them to work for these companies, despite being banned from working in the UK while they await a decision on their asylum claim.

The issue highlighted here is real, and important. Although it’s perfectly possible that some of those bikes may have belonged to people who’d just been given refugee status, and hence could work, it is true that some people, forbidden from taking up standard jobs, are being forced into irregular work, put at serious risk of exploitation and abuse in the shadow economy.

Warehoused in crowded, often crumbling hotels, people who’ve sought refuge in this country are expected to survive on less than £10 per week. With a staggering backlog of cases and a crisis in legal aid making it difficult to secure help to make their claim, many will spend years living in these conditions, sharing rooms with strangers, refused privacy or the dignity of basic choices like what to eat or where to go. With no legal way to support themselves, who could be surprised that some people see no choice but to seek out irregular work?

Read more:

• This housing project claims it could save Labour millions on housing asylum seekers in hotels
• Did Labour just abandon its promise for a fairer asylum system?
• ‘I came here for safety and I’ve come into danger’: The grim reality of life in asylum hotels for women

The people benefitting here are not those putting in backbreaking hours for pitiful pay. People who’ve survived war, persecution and perilous journeys to seek safety in this country are paying exploiters for the privilege of working 15-hour-plus shifts. With no working rights, they have nowhere to turn if things go wrong, no right to a minimum wage, no recourse against exploitation, and must live in fear of being found guilty of the “crime” of trying to work for a living. And while delivery riding is one visible output of the cruel work ban, it’s far from the only way this policy enforces exploitation.

Recent research by Women for Refugee Women highlights how these rules have forced women into sex work or abusive relationships in order to survive. Mothers seeking asylum report being unable to afford suitable food for their children, basic sanitary products, clothes or transportation. The all-party parliamentary group on poverty and inequality has accused the asylum system of creating “destitution by design” – in such a system, of course people will seek out irregular and unsafe ways to support themselves.

Not only are these “investigators” – who include the shadow home secretary – blaming the wrong target, the methods they’re using are shameful and dangerous. Copying the grubby playbook of far-right ‘migrant hunters’, they show up outside accommodation centres, filming and photographing people without their consent, their coverage making the locations of these hotels clearly identifiable. Less than a year since far-right rioters attempted to burn people alive inside a Rotherham hotel, we know all too well the harm that the targeting of individual hotels can cause.

The total disregard for the risk of violence and harassment this approach creates has been made possible by years of dehumanising rhetoric about people seeking asylum. Lifting the ban on work could not only stop people being forced into irregular working, it could help return some humanity to the debate about sanctuary seekers. Extending the right to work, allowing people to share their skills with their new communities and to form new bonds as colleagues and friends would promote community cohesion and understanding – reducing the appetite for videos that paint people trying to make ends meet as a shadowy threat.

Ending the ban on work is simple common sense. Research has found it could increase tax revenue by as much as £1.3bn. It would bring the UK back into step with policies in most other OECD countries. It would reduce the costs of the asylum system and help people rebuild their lives more quickly. And it would stop people from being forced into exploitative, irregular work – including in the food delivery industry.

In the wake of this coverage, this week the Government will meet with delivery companies to try and enforce tougher rules. But no amount of violent enforcement raids or cracking down on companies will solve the underlying issues driving people seeking asylum into irregular work and labour exploitation. The limbo, poverty and isolation that hostile policies, including the work ban and pitiful support rates, trap people in are what causes irregular working – addressing them is the only way to end it.

Nathan Philips is head of campaigns for Asylum Matters, which co-leads the Lift the Ban coalition campaigning for the right to work for people seeking asylum.

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