The Home Office has launched an urgent probe into taxpayer-funded payment cards being used to gamble by Migrants living in asylum hotels.
"Asylum seekers" entering Britain are handed "Aspen" cards by the Home Office upon arrival, designed to be used to buy food, clothes or toiletries.
A Home Office spokesperson told PoliticsHome: "The Home Office has begun an investigation into the use of Aspen cards.
"The Home Office has a legal obligation to support asylum seekers, including any dependents, who would otherwise be destitute."
PA
|The Home Office has launched an urgent probe into taxpayer-funded payment cards being used to gamble by Migrants living in asylum hotels
Migrants are given £9.95 a week to spend on their card if living in a fully catered hotel.
The amount increases to £49.18 per week if the person is living in self-catering accommodation.
The probe comes just hours after figures revealed that some 6,537 asylum seekers have used Aspen cards in "gambling settings" over the last year across the UK.
In the highest single week on record, in November 2024, 227 migrants tried to use, or used, the cards to gamble.
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS:
PA | When housed in fully catered hotels, migrants are given £9.95 a weekThe lowest seven-day period came last July, with only 40 migrants using the funds to gamble.
The cards cannot be used online, meaning migrants were only able to use the payments in physical locations such as the Casino, slot machine arcades and National Lottery retailers.
Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Mayor Paul Bristow revealed it was "not unusual" to see small boat migrants at betting shops.
He told PoliticsHome: "Peterborough has seen a huge increase in the number of gambling establishments and gaming centres, and a huge increase in men who've arrived across the Channel on small boats.
"It's not unusual to see the very same men in some of the establishments on a Thursday, Friday or Saturday night.
"There's something going on here. Questions need to be asked. It would be absolutely wrong if they were using money given to them by British taxpayers to waste on gambling or in adult gaming centres."
PA | The probe comes just hours after figures revealed that some 6,537 asylum seekers have used Aspen cards in 'gambling settings' over the last year across the UK
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp, meanwhile, said: "It is shocking that over 6,000 illegal immigrants have attempted to use hard-working British taxpayers' money to gamble.
"They have illegally entered this country without needing to - France is safe, and no one needs to flee from there.
"The British taxpayer has put them up in hotels, and now they slap us in the face by using the money they are given to fund gambling.
"These illegal immigrants clearly don't need the money they are given if they are squandering it at casinos and arcades."
GB News has approached the Home Office for comment.
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