Exclusive: Detainees worked a million hours on 1 wages in past five years, sparking claims of government exploitation
The Home Office has paid asylum seekers 1 an hour to carry out more than a million hours of work in the past five years, openDemocracy can reveal.
The government has been accused of exploitation after documents seen by this website showed detainees in immigration centres run by Home Office contractors are working hundreds of thousands of hours a year for meagre wages.
Detainees’ roles vary, but include cleaners, welfare buddies, kitchen assistants, barbers, laundry orderlies, painters, gym orderlies and shop assistants.
One person who works in an immigration detention centre told openDemocracy that the centre he is being held in is reliant on this low-paid work.
The Home Office and the private firms running the centres claim work is offered to relieve detainees’ boredom and is popular. But experts say that such poor wages, which have not been raised in 15 years, can “never be ethical”.
Records obtained under Freedom of Information laws reveal that detainees carried out more than 385,000 hours of paid work in 2018 and 325,460 in 2019. The hours worked fell during the pandemic – to 163,600 in 2020 and 126,700 in 2021 – when detainee numbers were reduced due to safety concerns, before rising to 215,000 last year.
The wages are funded by the Home Office, although they are paid to the detainees by the private contractors running the detention centres, which are...
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