Asylum seekers are using taxpayer handouts to fund their gaming routines. Pre-paid cards provided out to pay for basics including food and clothes are being used in gambling venues such as bookmakers, amusement arcades and even gambling establishments, Home Office data programs.

In the last year, up to 6,537 asylum candidates have used the government-issued cards at least once for betting. The shock figures were launched under freedom of details laws to the PoliticsHome website. They set off require an instant clampdown to prevent the abuse of taxpayers' cash by asylum hunters, including lots of who got in the country illegally. Last night, the Office validated it had launched an inquiry into the scandal.

It came as Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp (visualized) explained the 'stunning' figures as 'an insult to taxpayers'. 'These individuals have illegally entered this nation without needing to - France is safe and nobody needs to run away from there,' he stated. 'The British taxpayer has actually put them up in hotels and now they slap us in the face by utilizing the cash they are offered to fund gaming. These prohibited immigrants plainly do not require the cash they are offered if they are wasting it at gambling establishments and arcades. Labour has actually lost control of our borders with record numbers for unlawful immigrants crossing the Channel this year. The number in asylum hotels has actually increased given that the election and now we find out of this insult to British taxpayers. Everyone illegally crossing the Channel must be immediately eliminated to their nation of origin or a safe third country in order to discourage these crossings.'

So-called Aspen cards are issued to asylum hunters while they wait to have their claims dealt with - a procedure that can take months, or perhaps years. Those in self-catered lodging receive ₤ 49.18 on the card each week to spend for 'clothing and footwear, non-prescription medicines, travel, food, non-alcoholic beverages, toiletries, laundry, toilet tissue and communications'. The cards are presently issued to around 80,000 people who are waiting on a choice on whether they have a valid claim to remain in the UK. Many are living in hotels at the taxpayers' expenditure. The Home Office last night said: 'The Office have actually started an investigation into using Aspen cards. The Home Office has a legal obligation to support asylum hunters, including any dependants, who would otherwise be destitute.'

The Home Office has the ability to track where the cards are used but does not block payments for specific kinds of transaction. The figures reveal that considerable varieties of asylum applicants are now using the cards to bet. The Office figures break down how many asylum seekers attempted to use their cards in betting locations every week. They do not tape the number of times each private attempted to utilize their card because week. They show that an average of 125 asylum hunters a week utilized their cards with 'gambling-related merchants'.

Dozens utilized the cards every week, with 177 using them to gamble in Christmas week when lots of venues are closed. The figures peaked at 227 in one week at the end of November in 2015. The Aspen cards use a chip and pin system so can not be used for contactless payments or online. An Office source insisted it was 'not possible' to use the cards to straight place a bet. However, the information is understood to consist of withdrawals made from money machines inside venues such as amusement arcades and casinos - where betting is the sole focus.

Paul Bristow (imagined), Tory mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, suggested gambling by asylum candidates at the taxpayers' expense might even be fuelling the growth of the industry. He informed PoliticsHome: 'Peterborough has actually seen a substantial increase in the number of betting establishments and gaming centres, and a huge increase in males who have actually arrived on little boats. It's not unusual to see the very exact 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 definitely incorrect if they were utilizing cash provided to them by to lose on gambling.'

Reform UK's deputy leader Richard Tice said: 'This revelation, combined with migrants working unlawfully, shows that the Home Office is incapable of policing the prohibited migrant population. This is a slap in the face to dedicated British taxpayers who are having a hard time to make ends satisfy.' The discoveries are likely to sustain issues about the explosion in little boat crossings under Labour. Around 20,000 individuals crossed the Channel illegally in the first half of this year - an increase of 50 percent on the previous year. Public anger is currently mounting over the policy of accommodating 10s of thousands of asylum hunters in hotels throughout the nation, with angry protests emerging in recent days in Epping, in Essex, Diss in Norfolk and Canary Wharf, in London.

The Aspen cards were presented to offer fundamental subsistence for asylum applicants who are not legally allowed to work or declare benefits for the most part. But ministers are increasingly concerned at proof of unlawful working by asylum seekers, which might permit some to treat their taxpayer-funded handouts as pin cash. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has actually purchased a clampdown on prohibited working this week following a string of reports about asylum applicants generating income in the gig economy with shipment companies such as Deliveroo and Just Eat. In some cases, shipment bikes bearing the firms' logos have been seen parked outside asylum hotels.

Firms will be released with information on the locations of asylum hotels and purchased to stop using workers who appear to have actually been running from there. But professionals question whether this will work. Emma Brooksbank, migration partner at law firm Freeths, said the strategy was most likely to show ineffective. 'It will not be hard for illegal employees to bypass this restriction and prevent detection. Companies like these gig economy operators are mostly uncontrolled, and as such the normal right to work penalties of ₤ 60,000 per illegal worker do not use. They have no real reward to tidy up their act.'

FranceThe Home OfficeChannel 4