COMPAS’ Understanding Migrant Destitution in the UK study explores local statutory provision across the UK for vulnerable people with ‘no recourse to public funds’ (NRPF), mapping the scale and profile of people receiving social care support across all four UK nations.
In comparison to England and Scotland, the data quality on this topic is particularly poor in Northern Ireland, with health and social care trusts struggling to provide accurate data on the numbers of people with NRPF receiving support.
Health and social care trusts in Northern Ireland and local authorities in Great Britain provide a ‘parallel welfare safety net’ (Price & Spencer, 2015) for vulnerable people excluded from the accessing mainstream benefits due to their immigration status, however this parallel welfare system does not receive any central UK government support and is increasingly dysfunctional, unable to provide adequate support for the increasing numbers of people facing destitution.
The growing numbers of people subject to the NRPF visa condition across the UK have more than doubled from 1.48 million in 2020 to 3.6 million in 2024. With growing levels of destitution across the UK, we cannot hope to tackle wider strategic priorities including reducing homelessness, ending child poverty and tackling domestic violence and abuse without considering how vulnerable people are impacted by the NRPF policy.
There are wide calls from local government, cross-party parliamentary committees and people with lived experience for a significant reform of the NRPF policy, including a call to end the use of the NRPF condition. In the meantime, there needs to be significant improvements to fix a patchy and dysfunctional local safety net, including providing central government funding to social care departments, developing local leadership to evidence the need and tackle migrant destitution, and the importance of listening to and including migrant voices
