Suella Braverman acted unlawfully over asylum seekers, judge rules | Immigration and asylum

The home secretary acted unlawfully in failing to provide basic support to asylum seekers, including young children and pregnant women, a judge has ruled.

Suella Braverman must introduce changes that will benefit thousands of asylum seekers after five successfully challenged the home secretary in the high court.

Three of the claimants brought proceedings over delays in providing financial support while two challenged over failures to provide cash payments to pregnant women and to children under three years old.

In his ruling, Mr Justice Swift found that the home secretary broke the law in withholding payments of £3 a week to provide healthy food for children aged one to three and to pregnant women.

She must start making these payments to the thousands of pregnant women and people with children under three in hotels.

The judge also found that the system the home secretary has been operating for dealing with asylum support payments was unlawful due to long delays in processing requests for these payments.

Asylum seekers are not allowed to work for the first year that their claim is being considered and after that only those on the government’s shortage occupation list are allowed to work. Many asylum seekers are entirely dependent on the Home Office for their survival in the form of payments of £45 a week if they are in shared housing or £9.10 a week if they are living in a hotel.

The court heard evidence that the hotel food was pasta, rice, chips, mashed potato and dry sandwiches so it was not possible for the two people who brought the challenge over the lack of healthy food payments for pregnant women and small children to eat suitable food when relying solely on what the hotel provided.

Among the cases in which the asylum seekers struggled to provide basics for their children owing to delays in support payments, the judge said one faced an existence “which was in many ways wretched, particularly for a young child who went without on many occasions” and in another suffered “very saddening circumstances” where the parent was “reduced to asking in shops for leftover food” and the children became “lethargic” and “visibly thinner”.

In a third case involving an 82-year-old disabled woman who was unable to access accommodation and support in a timely way, the home secretary has been ordered to pay her compensation after accepting she had unlawfully failed in her legal duty to provide the woman with accommodation and support.

Lawyers who represented the five asylum seekers welcomed the ruling. The associate solicitor at Leigh Day, John Crowley, who represented the three who challenged delays in support, said: “The court has found in no uncertain terms that the Home Office’s current system for supporting asylum seekers is unlawful.

“It is unacceptable that my clients, and so many others like them, had to go months and months without any form of support, forcing them into desperate and horrifying situations. It cannot be right that people legitimately seeking asylum are made to suffer such degrading treatment.”

Solicitors Sasha Rozansky and Ugo Hayter, from Deighton Pierce Glynn,representing the asylum seekers challenging the lack of financial support for pregnant asylum seekers and those with small children, said: “This is a victory for basic dignity and fundamental rights for people in hotels, which means that pregnant women and small children will get the additional payments which were unlawfully withheld from them.”

The Home Office has been approached for comment.