Latest news with #taxpayer
Telegraph
8 hours ago
- Politics
- Telegraph
Asylum seekers use taxpayer money for gambling
Asylum seekers are using taxpayer handouts to pay for their gambling habits, Home Office data show. Migrants are using their pre-paid benefits cards in gambling venues such as bookmakers, amusement arcades and casinos. Up to 6,537 asylum seekers have used the government cards at least once in the past year in a gambling venue, according to the figures released under Freedom of Information laws to the PoliticsHome website. The disclosure sparked calls for an immediate clampdown to prevent the abuse of taxpayers' money by asylum seekers, including many who entered the country illegally. The cards are supposed to be used to pay for basics including food and clothing. The Home Office confirmed it was investigating the illegal use of Aspen cards. 'The Home Office has a legal obligation to support asylum seekers, including any dependents, who would otherwise be destitute,' a spokesman said. Jonathan Reynolds, the Business Secretary, said: 'You shouldn't be able to use Aspen cards for this. Support for asylum seekers in the UK, it is not a lot of money, it is about £7 a day I think for essentials, but you should be using that for essentials, you shouldn't be able to use it for this. 'It is very concerning, it shouldn't happen, there is an immediate investigation to find out exactly what has gone on here.' 'Slapping taxpayer in the face' Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said: 'These people 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 'Everyone illegally crossing the Channel should be immediately removed to their country of origin or a safe third country in order to deter these crossings.' Asylum seekers are issued with Aspen cards by the Home Office while their claims are processed. Migrants in self-catered accommodation receive £49.18 on the card each week to pay for 'clothes and footwear, non-prescription medicines, travel, food, non-alcoholic drinks, toiletries, laundry, toilet paper and communications'. The cards are currently issued to around 80,000 asylum seekers who are waiting for a decision on whether they have a valid claim to stay in the UK. Many are living in hotels at the taxpayers' expense. The Home Office is able to track where the cards are used but does not block payments for particular types of transaction. The figures break down how many asylum seekers attempted to use their cards in gambling venues each week. They do not record how many times each individual attempted to use their card in that week. They show that an average of 125 asylum seekers a week used their cards with 'gambling-related merchants'. Dozens used the cards every week, with 177 using them to gamble in Christmas week when many venues are closed. The figures peaked at 227 in one week at the end of November last year. The Aspen cards use a chip and pin system so cannot be used for contactless payments or online. A Home Office source said it was 'not possible' to use the cards to directly place a bet. However, the data is understood to include withdrawals made from cash machines inside venues such as amusement arcades and casinos – where gambling is the sole focus. Paul Bristow, Tory mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, told PoliticsHome: 'Peterborough has seen a huge increase in the number of gambling establishments and gaming centres, and a huge increase in men who have arrived 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.' Reform UK's deputy leader Richard Tice said: 'This revelation, coupled with migrants working illegally, shows that the Home Office is incapable of policing the illegal migrant population. This is a slap in the face to hardworking British taxpayers who are struggling to make ends meet.' The disclosure comes amid growing unrest over the policy of accommodating asylum seekers in hotels across the country. Protests have been staged in recent days in Epping, in Essex, Diss in Norfolk and Canary Wharf, in London. Asylum seekers are barred from working for the first year while their claim is processed. The Aspen cards were introduced to provide basic subsistence as they are not eligible to work. However, some asylum seekers have been illegally working particularly in the gig economy with delivery firms such as Deliveroo, Uber Eats and Just Eat, sparking a government crackdown. This week Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, announced the firms will be issued with data on the locations of asylum hotels in order to track down migrants who have been illegally loaned accounts by delivery staff.
The Sun
17 hours ago
- Politics
- The Sun
Fury as over 6,000 migrants use pre-paid cards loaded with £50 a week funded by YOU at betting shops & casinos
OVER 6,000 migrants have used government-issued cards loaded with £50 a week at betting shops and casinos. Pre-paid cards given out to pay for basics including food and clothing were used in gambling venues, Home Office data reveals. 1 In the last year, up to 6,637 asylum seekers have used taxpayer handouts to fund their gambling habits. At the highest incidence, 227 asylum seekers attempted to use or successfully used the cards to gamble in a week last November. While attempts to gamble online using the cards had been made, they were blocked each time so they were forced to use them in physical sites. There are currently around 80,000 ASPEN card users in the UK. Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp told PoliticsHome: '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.'
The Independent
3 days ago
- Politics
- The Independent
‘Stop violating the law!': Exasperated judge blasts Trump for blackout over public money
A federal judge gave Donald Trump's administration some simple instructions when it comes to 'violating' the law: Stop doing it. In a ruling on Monday, District Judge Emmet Sullivan in Washington, D.C. found that the White House Office of Management and Budget illegally took down a public website showing how federal agencies spend taxpayer money. 'There is nothing unconstitutional about Congress requiring the Executive Branch to inform the public of how it is apportioning the public's money,' Sullivan wrote in a 60-page opinion. 'Defendants are therefore required to stop violating the law!' added Sullivan — emphasis his. The administration removed the website in March. OMB director Russell Vought told members of Congress that the office intentionally flouted the law by scraping the database due to the 'sensitive' and 'deliberative' nature of the information on it. A lawsuit from nonprofit watchdog groups Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and Protect Democracy accused the administration of removing data to which they are statutorily entitled as part of their efforts to monitor government funding. According to Sullivan, Trump and Vought relied on 'an extravagant and unsupported theory of presidential power' to argue that the government's appropriation of public funds does not need to be publicly disclosed. Instead, they complained about the 'extra work' required of them under law passed by Congress in 2022 and 2023, Sullivan wrote. 'This is a management issue; not a constitutional one,' he said. The judge ordered OMB to restore the database and publicly disclose the information on it, including any apportionment information from the time the database was taken offline. 'The law is clear that the federal government must make its appropriations decisions public,' according to Adina Rosenbaum, Public Citizen Litigation Group attorney and counsel on the case. 'So this case turned on a straightforward point: The administration must follow the law.' Nikhel Sus, deputy chief counsel at CREW, said the decision 'reaffirms Congress's constitutional authority to require public disclosure of how taxpayer dollars are spent.' 'Americans have a right to know how taxpayer money is being spent,' he added. 'Ensuring public access to this information serves as a critical check on the executive branch's abuse and misuse of federal funds.' The Trump administration has repeatedly taken a beating in federal court, with dozens of court orders across the country striking down key elements of his agenda as unconstitutional, or, in one case, confounding a judge who compared his sweeping executive actions to a 'gumbo' giving him 'heartburn.' The president, whose critics have accused him of mounting a constitutional crisis in his defiance of the courts, has resisted court orders nearly one-third of the time. In an analysis of 165 court orders filed against the Trump administration, The Washington Post found the president has been accused of defying decisions in at least 57 cases. The Supreme Court's recent decision stemming from legal challenges striking down his executive order that seeks to redefine birthright citizenship could significantly diminish judicial authority. The high court's decision could effectively prevent judges — who are facing an avalanche of legal questions challenging the constitutionality of the president's agenda — from issuing nationwide injunctions, making it extraordinarily difficult to unwind the president's actions if they are later found to be illegal. Vought, meanwhile, argues that the appropriations process should be 'less bipartisan.' 'There is no voter in the country that went to the polls and said, 'I'm voting for a bipartisan appropriations process,'' he told a Christian Science Monitor event last week. 'That may be the view of something that appropriators want to maintain.' Vought, a former Heritage Foundation policy director and co-author of Project 2025, had recently ushered through legislation to revoke $9 billion in previously approved federal funding to gut global aid programs and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds National Public Radio and PBS.
Telegraph
3 days ago
- Health
- Telegraph
Britain must stop subsidising pensioners to save the NHS
The Government recently produced a paper on the NHS entitled 'Fit for the Future – The 10 Year Health Plan for England'. It included many radical ideas and didn't pull its punches in regard to the need for reform. It said: 'The choice is stark: reform or die'. And, if nothing is done, it said, the NHS could become 'a poor service for poor people'. Despite its radical tone and many good ideas, this report did not go far enough. In particular, it accepted the continuation of the current system of funding whereby just about the whole cost of the Service is borne by the taxpayer. In a report published last week by Policy Exchange entitled 'The NHS – a Suitable Case for Treatment?', I and two co-authors went much further and called for an end to the system of predominantly taxpayer funding which has been the model since the NHS was founded in 1948. In the mid-1950s the government spent about 3pc of its GDP on healthcare. Today the figure is 9pc (excluding the private sector), amounting to almost a fifth of all government spending. If nothing is done, by 2070 we could end up spending more than a fifth of our GDP on the NHS. This is unacceptable. If we allowed this to happen, other sorts of public spending would have to be squeezed and/or taxes would have to be raised to eye-watering levels. This would have a devastating effect on incentives and therefore a materially depressing effect on the economy. The funding system is the first of the NHS's major problems. The second is inadequate quality. Many British people think that the NHS delivers a first-class service. Yet, it is clear that the NHS offers neither the best nor the worst healthcare in the world. Admittedly, at its best, it is superb, but the standard is hit and miss, and at its worst, it is pretty bad. Among a group of countries of comparable economic development (Australia, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Singapore, Switzerland and the US), on both life expectancy and healthy life expectancy the UK comes in second to last. Only the US scores worse. On preventable and treatable mortality, the UK again comes in second to last, ahead of only the US. On the proportion of patients waiting over a year to see a specialist, the UK is the highest in the group. We also perform badly on the ease of securing an appointment with a GP and access to GPs out of hours. What is to be done? Whenever someone criticises the NHS and suggests that we need to move to a different model, a chorus of voices loudly proclaims that we must not become like America. Indeed not. The US health system pulls off a remarkable double whammy. Although some of the best healthcare in the world is to be found in the United States, average health outcomes for the population as a whole are simply dire. Meanwhile, the system is about the most expensive in the world. However bad the NHS may seem, it is infinitely preferable to the American system. Under no circumstances should we consider copying the US. But we don't have to. There are many countries in the world which operate a different system for funding healthcare and enjoy better average health outcomes than the UK. The essence of their approach is to combine charging and co-payments with a system of social insurance. That is to say, compulsory purchasing of medical insurance, covering everyone in the population, with concessionary rates or even full reimbursement available for poor people. The state remains involved as both a partial funder, co-ordinator and regulator of the system. But governments spend much less on healthcare in these countries than we do, and thereby place a much smaller burden on their taxpayers. Countries that run such a system include Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Singapore and Switzerland. The most outstandingly successful of these is Singapore. It spends only about 5pc of its GDP on healthcare and of that, not much more than a half comes from government. Meanwhile, Singapore achieves just about the best health outcomes in our comparator group. Yet Singapore is a very special case, with a particular political and social model. For an example that would serve the UK well, we should probably look closer to home. The obvious place to look is the Netherlands, not least because it underwent a radical reform of its health system in 2006. It delivers high standards of healthcare yet the government spends only 1pc of GDP on health. Some people will argue that we already have a system of insurance to pay for healthcare, namely National Insurance. Despite its name, however, this is not really a system of insurance. It is rather another form of tax. The amount of money the state pays for healthcare is not restricted by the amount of National Insurance contributions coming into the Treasury. Moreover, unlike pensions, where eligibility is connected with National Insurance contributions, a person's ability to access the NHS is not circumscribed by their NI contribution record. Moving from a system of funding through taxation to one based largely on social insurance is going to be a tough ask. It cannot be completed overnight. The place to start a programme to reform the financing of the NHS is with the introduction of a small charge for GP appointments and an end to the automatic entitlement to free prescriptions for pensioners, regardless of their financial circumstances. Doubtless many people will say that these proposals destroy the essence of the NHS as it was established in 1948. But the provision of healthcare in this country cannot be treated as a sort of museum exhibit. We can adhere to the spirit of the NHS in creating a system that delivers excellent healthcare for all within a funding framework that is right for the 21 st century.
RNZ News
4 days ago
- Business
- RNZ News
Flood victims will not be on their own, says chair of contentious report
There will always be a role for the government in alleviating hardship, says the head of a panel that looked at how the government should adapt to climate change. Photo: RNZ The chair of the panel behind a contentious report on how the government should adapt to climate change says its authors never meant that flood victims should get no help from the taxpayer. The report was criticised for leaving people to manage their own flood risk after a transition phase of possibly about 20 years. But Matt Whineray says there will always be a role for the government in alleviating hardship, beyond the initial disaster response. "I think the government will always have a role in alleviating hardship - that's my view and that's the discussion we had at the reference group - but most critically it's not linked to the property value." Whineray said councils and central government could not keep buying properties at market rates when they were not suitable for rebuilding and were not covered by private insurance. He cited overseas examples of homes being rebuilt in the same place six times, with the government as the default insurer. Whineray said that did not mean people should be left on their own, even after a cut off date, and even after homeowners have been supplied with the best available risk information. He said currently there was an unofficial but powerful assumption that people will be compensated to their full pre-flood value - an expensive proposition for tax- and/or rate-payers, as climate change and poor development decisions increase the number of ruined homes. But Whineray said there were other ways to supply compensation, like capping the amount people can get for relocation assistance. "It's just how you determine how you do that and step away from a world where you say someone gets to get $5 million because because that's what they thought it was worth the day before the event happened. "There will be an impact (on property prices)," he said. "If you moved directly to a world where there is no automatic buyout, you have that abruptness. The idea of the transition period is to smooth the impact. "At some the point in the future where the government is no longer underwriting those property values, that will have been reflected by the market." Canterbury University Professor and climate scientist Dave Frame has been studying how much worse extreme events are getting on a hotter planet, and how much worse they might be expected to get in different parts of the country. He said he understood why some experts wanted a fund for property buyouts, and he also understood why others were wary of promising guaranteed compensation. "Often the people who are most adept at tapping into those funds are the kind of people who've been climate sceptics their whole life, brought a low lying property and now want to exit without paying a bill. It's the classic moral hazard," he said. "It's actually a really subtle one for the government to find a way of exercising prudent judgement, like it seems to me to be pretty clear that the people up Esk Valley weren't being unduly risky in in their behaviour." Professor Jonathan Boston of Victoria UNiversity led a previous report on how to stage a planned exit from the most risky areas. That report said financial help was needed to avoid worsening inequality and keep communities functioning, but the primary goal should not be restoring people's full wealth. Boston agreed that offering uncapped compensation or government insurance encouraged people to stay (and build) in places they should not, and said councils often struggled to stop them. But he said many people would not have the money to leave on their own, without some government assistance. "Some people will have mortgages and they run the risk of being left without any equity, in fact in debt, other people might not have a mortgage but the property might be unsaleable so they have no means of purchasing another property... they are in what a colleague has called property purgatory." Boston said he found it mind boggling that society would allow people with kids or serious disabilities to stay in harm's way, as councils withdrew sewage, water and road maintenance. He did not believe the decision to exit can be left to individual choice, even once people have access better access to risk information. "With sea level rise, more powerful storms and so on, if you look out decades and indeed centuries fro now, tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of properties in New Zealand are going to be vulnerable to one kind of flooding or another, or other hazards, and if there's no assistance to help people move, well it's pretty clear that we're going to have a hell of a mess." The environment ministry is working on options to present to the government, on how to move from today's ad hoc regime to something more financially sustainable. What that looks like and who pays still is not clear. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
