COMPAS’ Understanding Migrant Destitution in the UK study estimates that around 1,800 destitute people with ‘No Recourse to Public Funds’ (NRPF) were supported by Welsh local authorities in 2021/22, including around 1,000 children, 500 families and 340 vulnerable adults at an estimated cost of around £10m. Compared to England and Scotland, data quality on this topic is particularly poor in Wales, which is very likely to be a significant underestimate.
Local authorities 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 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 have more than doubled from 1.48 million in 2020 to 3.3 million in 2023. With growing levels of destitution across the UK, we cannot hope to tackle broader 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 widespread 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 substantial improvements to fix a patchy and dysfunctional local safety net, including providing central government funding to social care departments, developing local leadership to tackle migrant destitution, and the importance of listening to and including migrant voices when designing services, building on the learning of the Windrush Lessons Learned review.
