Refugees facing 'impending shortage' in UK
A UK parliamentary committee says there is an "impending shortage" of housing for asylum seekers in the UK.
In a report, the home affairs committee announced that the issue is being made worse by a lack of "fair and equal dispersal", with some areas receiving hundreds of people and others getting none.
The report includes Home Office figures showing where asylum seekers are being housed, with Glasgow having the most - 3,084 people - as of the end of 2015, the state-funded BBC reported.
According to the report, asylum seekers are found accommodation while their applications are being considered, often in areas where cheap housing is available.
Committee Chairman Keith Vaz said “the dispersal system appears unfair, with whole swathes of the country never receiving a single asylum seeker. The majority are being moved into low-cost housing in urban areas such as Glasgow, Stoke, Cardiff and of course Middlesbrough, where the ratio is one asylum seeker per 137 people.However, on the data we have received, local authorities in areas such as Maidenhead, Lincoln and Warwick have housed none.”
Other areas listed in the report as having no-one in receipt of aid given to asylum seekers - known as Section 95 support - in the final quarter of 2015 included Cambridge, Cornwall, Midlothian and York, BBC said.
Local authorities with few asylum seekers, or none, should be "actively encouraged by ministers to volunteer" to take some, the report said.
Back in January, British lawmakers warned the Home Office the refugees should be dispersed equally across the country and not dumped together in town where they would put a strain on public services.
Meanwhile, over 120 economists criticized the British government’s policy toward the recent refugee crisis in Europe, describing it as “seriously inadequate, morally unacceptable and economically wrong.”
In an open letter to British Prime Minister David Cameron, published in February, the economists, including former United Nations and World Bank officials, said the UK government “can do far more” to settle the refugee crisis.
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