AIBU to share this Reform exposé from C4?

The poster's links tell us that we spent £2.1 billion on housing asylum seekers in hotels (not including other accommodation 2024/25) - £4.53 billion overall on asylum support, resettlement and accommodation.

Around 55% of the cost is funded from the foreign aid budget, the other 45% from the Home Office budget and reserves.

The influx basically reduced wage inflation, making people poorer over time.

Farage admits that the undercover report on donations 'looks bad'

In an interview with the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg, Nigel Farage acknowledged that the comments by James Orr and Dan Jukes were “injudicious at best” and admitted that the optics of the undercover filming don’t look good for his party.
“This looks bad, as does the sale of peerages, as does government contracts for donations. We are not the first people to be involved in a row over donations,” he said.
The BBC aired the full interview during its politics show on Sunday, having released an excerpt of it on Saturday.

@placemats thanks and I think going back to the 2006s is important as well because blairs choosing to relax ee workers rights hit the UK like a ton of bricks millions of new people but no funding ,suddenly needing new classrooms bulit on play grounds more social services needed more charities going under because they could t cope and so on.
Then whilst the UK was dealing with that shock we had the credit ciriis didn't we which then led to austerity and so on.

@Septembersunrays

Several major events took place in the last 12 years, and they are important.

Firstly Brexit. This was a disaster because there was never going to be sunlit uplands and the NHS was never going to be 'saved'. Instead it caused extreme upheaval for those exporting and importing from our nearest neighbour, mainland Europe.

Secondly COVID. A world wide pandemic that meant a Government that would be responsible and act in a manner that was honest and good. Instead we had Boris Johnson as PM. It was a disaster ending in billions being given to contractors who supplied the wrong equipment.

Thirdly PM Liz Truss and her disastrous budget. So disastrous was this, even for the Conservatives, that she lasted only 49 days in her role.

It takes time for the country to recover from those three events. It's not possible to turn it round to prosperity in two years of Government. Long term planning is needed.

I'll be interested to see how what inroads Burnham's new project for dramatically reducing homelessness will have.

It is complex helping someone with this woman's needs, but it is also an area where we know of things which work. I believe Burnham's had some impact on rough sleeping in Manchester. And I can't find the article just now but I remember reading it just as austerity began to bite, where people working in homelessness prevention in (I think) Birmingham were pulling their hair out saying, "We know how to bring homelessness down and keep it down, but all the services we need are being slashed."

I admire your empathy for people with complex mental health crises, who need better benefits and more targeted support - and I think if you’re a Reform support you are going to be very angry and disappointed by their plans to slash benefits.

You are probably also furious at Richard Tice from Reform saying married couples should have priority for council housing, as that would push this woman right down the queue.

But it’s an entirely separate to issue to how asylum seekers are housed while their applications are processed.

It’s also an entirely different issue to how anyone can be okay with a political party disrespecting our democracy by allowing foreign donors to illegally buy influence.

But anyone calling for cuts are doing so because we are told there isn't any money.
So what's true ?

But the gov is telling us there are endless black holes and we all have our part to play to pay more taxes and thresholds are frozen ?
The labour gov led us to believe we are so in trouble they took fuel payments from old people ? Yes it was backtracked but only after much disgust ?
Who is lying to whom? There is no black hole ?
What's going on ?

That poor woman sounds like she has exactly the sort of complex needs @5128gap was talking about. She has severe but fluctuating mental health needs.

She's successively been housed by family and been housed in hostels (that would be the closest match for asylum seeker hostels). The council have considered providing shared accommodation for her, but her mental health makes her high risk for the other residents.

At the same time she's not unwell enough to meet the threshold for an inpatient hospital admission.

When people scoff at "mental illness" as some sort of skive, and cheer the cuts to mental health services and clamour for more cuts to housing and to benefits for people with mental illness, this is the sort of person who is on the receiving end.

There's a lot more to that story that what is in that article... the last to join the queue do generally join at the back, that is how it works.

Worth pointing out, too, that when you start pissing off big housebuilding companies they fight back.

It's VERY much in their interest to go "look over there" and scapegoat someone else in order to deflect attention from themselves.

I wonder how this poor lady feels about being lower priority than random men from Eritrea who come here illegally.

Former nurse living in a tent after council say she’s ‘not a priority’ for housing

https://www.google.com/amp/s/metro.co.uk/2026/07/03/former-nurse-living-a-tent-council-say-not-a-priority-housing-29028537/amp/

Oh and that goes for housing as well.

That's why creating more affordable housing is so important.

Again that may mean pissing off particular voting blocks like landlords. It may also mean doing things that have the big housebuilding companies up in arms.

I was truly shocked to learn the reality behind the low levels of housing construction in the past few decades. The housebuilding companies have the land and the planning permission, but have adopted a new strategy whereby their profits come from creating scarcity in order to drive up house prices, whereupon they make a bigger profit on each property they sell. Rather than what used to be the case that they would make their money by building lots of properties.

How big UK housebuilders have remained profitable without meeting housing supply targets
https://theconversation.com/how-big-uk-housebuilders-have-remained-profitable-without-meeting-housing-supply-targets-215757

Foye, Chris and Shepherd, Edward 2023. Why have the volume housebuilders been so profitable? The power of volume housebuilders and what this tells us about housing supply, the land market and the state. [Project Report]. UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence. Available at:
https://housingevidence.ac.uk/project/why-have-the-volume-housebuilders-been-so-profitable/

I remember that some academics (probably Foye and Shepherd) were so stunned when their graphs revealed the extent of the big housebuilders' profits that they thought they must have entered the figures wrong, and went back to double-check. Nope. All correct.

Anyway, I'm glad the current government have made a start on the housebuilding needed, but there's plenty more that needs to be done.

No one should ever try to persuade anyone there isn't enough food in this country. Or indeed enough properties to house everyone.
What we lack is sufficient affordable food and affordable housing plus the support the more vulnerable members of our society need to access both.
This situation is a result of a variety of factors that arise when a capitalist society fails to make adequate provision for those who can't keep up. When wealthy people buy more property than they need in order to profit. When prices rise, when benefits and mental health, social, addiction and advice services are cut.
The person PP identified from their car as a British man is not begging for food because the UK has a food shortage because we're feeding immigrants. Nor is he homeless because immigrants have caused there to be insufficient homes.
He is homeless and hungry because the plentiful resources we have are controlled by the few who have driven then out of reach of many, and the most vulnerable people fall through the net entirely.

Oh I can completely believe that it happened.

And I've seen the thing of "But they're getting food! I'm not getting food" happen, too.

The state benefits that the person should be receiving to (more than) pay for their own choice of food never seem to get mentioned.

I don't know whether that's because the benefits have gone on something else (servicing debt, addiction, essential emergency repair...); or whether the person is not receiving the benefits they should be entitled to; or whether they are receiving the benefits they're entitled to but have fallen through a gap in the system (intentional delay in starting UC; gap between housing benefit ceiling and real-world rents...).

Thanks for explaining that about the Universal Credit waiting period, @5128gap . It's really obvious that if someone is already financially on the brink and has already taken on debt to manage each month, then the UC waiting period could be disastrous for them and precipitate a much larger catastrophe.

I completely agree with you that it needs a review. And not the sort of review which is only about "Where can we cut welfare without losing our specific voter base?"

Because an enormous amount of time and money has been expended convincing us that there isn’t enough food and accommodation in this country and that feeding/housing an asylum seeker necessarily means that a British born person is deprived of those things. I don’t blame the people who have fallen for this, but I do despise the people who have propagated it.

But - and I am actually genuinely curious about this - why is it uncomfortable to see asylum seekers receiving food?

You simply do not know what the asylum
seekers in that hotel might have been fleeing. They might have lost their home to famine or war. They might be fleeing persecution or torture. I understand we don’t have an infinite capacity to take on asylum seekers, but we’re apart of a global community and we do have a legal and moral duty to offer asylum to those who genuinely need it.

Why is it dystopian for us as a civilised, humane country to treat them with basic dignity while their claims are being processed? Personally, I think treating asylum seekers with respect - and then processing their claims quickly and efficiently - would be something to be proud of.

And in other things that didn’t happen…

Have you considered that they did understand it and had a plan?
Their plan was Nigel would mock the person from the podium , a screen with boring would be flashed and the person would be removed. The only question is- how much of the rest of it was planned.
Her protest was predictable because she did it the previous year.
Farage knows exactly what can happen if you whip up a crowd.

No, the system is still flawed. There is still a waiting period for UC that claimants have to bridge with a loan. The gaps remain and are part of the reason foodbanks are so busy. The system needs a review.
I was addressing PPs fears that job loss could result in their colleagues having to sleep in tents, by explaining that this is extremely unlikely if they are advised of their benefit entitlements and housing rights.

Well I'm glad to hear if there are new protections from loosing the roof over one's head while support kicks in.

Because we've been through a time when gaps have been actively opened up in the benefits system that made it much more likely that an everyday minor disaster (eg broken leg) became a life-changing catastrophe. Decisions like increasing the mandatory time gap between losing a job to being able to start a claim: potentially disastrous for someone already without much financial cushion.

(I'm not up-to-date with it all right now, because just at the moment I have a bit more security and I'm using it to actually live the little bit of life my body deigns to permit, after so many years spending my scant strength fighting the system to survive.)

A person with recourse to public funds is highly unlikely to find himself street sleeping after losing his job.
He would be entitled to UC which would include an amount to keep his existing roof over his head. If it didn't cover the full amount and arrears accrued, thanks to the new protections this government introduced, it would take around 6 months from arrears to eviction, giving him space to find alternative work or a cheaper place that benefits would cover in full.
Street sleepers typically have multiple and complex needs. Mental health problems, abusive or unstable backgrounds, people struggling with addictions. Its disgraceful that they end up on the streets and I'm so pleased at last we have a government that's committed to addressing it. However, it isn't a problem caused by immigration but failures in other support services, and it isn't a problem your colleagues are a job loss away from unless they have the additional disadvantages I listed.
If they really think that, then it indicates a limited knowledge of their entitlements, which is concerning. Should they ever lose their jobs, please advise them to visit an advice service.

A well earned rest.