Asylum support, resettlement and accommodation cost £4.2bn in 2025-26, and fell. Britain’s ageing population is projected to cost hundreds of billions more.
Asylum support, resettlement and accommodation cost £4.2bn in 2025-26 — and fell from £4.5bn the year before. Total welfare and pension spending is £322.6bn a year. The OBR projects age-related public spending (health, social care, pensions and more) rising from 26.3% of GDP in 2025-26 to 34.5% by 2075-76. No official model links asylum spending to that long-term pressure.
The claim
Immigration (or asylum specifically) is the main driver of Britain's welfare bill and long-term fiscal pressure.
What is true
Asylum support has measurable, real costs: £4.18bn in 2025-26 on the Home Office’s asylum support, resettlement and accommodation line — a genuine, large bill, not a trivial one, even though it fell from £4.51bn in 2024-25. It includes resettlement, so it is not the cost of hotels alone.
Put it in scale
£4.2bn
Observed: asylum support, resettlement and accommodation (annual, 2025-26)
£4.18bn in 2025-26, down from £4.51bn in 2024-25 on the same line (a 7% fall; the 2024-25 figure is restated in the 2025-26 accounts). The line includes resettlement, so it is not the cost of hotels alone. The 2024-25 accounts also gave a narrower “asylum support spend” of £4.0bn (down from £4.7bn), of which £2.1bn was hotels; the 2025-26 accounts give no figure on that narrower basis, so the two measures are different and are not compared directly. The OBR’s July 2026 report has no asylum cost line.
£322.6bn
Observed: total welfare/pension spend (annual, 2025/26)
Of which pensioner benefits alone are £177.7bn — dwarfing the asylum figure on the same annual, observed basis.
34.5%
Modelled: long-term ageing-related pressure (to 2075-76)
A long-term MODELLED projection, not an observed annual spend figure — never place this share of GDP on the same scale as the £4.2bn or £322.6bn ANNUAL figures above without saying so, which this card does explicitly. The OBR’s “total age-related spending” is a broad grouping (health, adult social care, education, State Pension, other welfare benefits and public service pensions), it is a projection of the UK population as a whole, and it contains no asylum line. It rises 8.2 percentage points of GDP over 50 years. The table gives 2035-36 and 2045-46 but not 2040, so no 2040 figure is quoted.
What we know / don’t know
Does the OBR (or any official body) publish a fiscal model isolating migration's effect on the long-term ageing-related spending projection?
Not in the latest edition. The OBR’s Fiscal risks and sustainability report of 7 July 2026 sets a net-migration assumption (about 230,000 a year from 2031, nearly 12 million extra people over 50 years; Chapter 2, paragraph 2.8, p.28) and shows how the baseline population is lower than in 2024, but it presents no new migration scenario and no asylum-cost line. Paragraph 2.39 (p.42) says migration effects were examined in the 2022 edition (a higher net-migration scenario) and the 2024 edition (scenarios varying migrants’ age at arrival, earnings and length of stay); those editions have not been reviewed for this card. This card therefore does NOT claim asylum or migration causes, offsets, or is modelled against the ageing-related projection above — the two are shown on the same scale for magnitude only, not linked causally.
The verdict
Asylum support costs billions. Britain's ageing population is projected to cost far more — but no official model links the two.
Every number on this card
| Figure | What it counts | Geography · period | Status | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| £4.2bn | Asylum support, resettlement and accommodation (Home Office, resource outturn)£4.18bn in 2025-26, down from £4.51bn in 2024-25 on the same line (a 7% fall; the 2024-25 figure is restated in the 2025-26 accounts). The line includes resettlement, so it is not the cost of hotels alone. The 2024-25 accounts also gave a narrower “asylum support spend” of £4.0bn (down from £4.7bn), of which £2.1bn was hotels; the 2025-26 accounts give no figure on that narrower basis, so the two measures are different and are not compared directly. The OBR’s July 2026 report has no asylum cost line. | United Kingdom · 2025-26 | KNOWN | Home Office, Annual Report and Accounts 2025-26 (HC 440), Statement of Outturn, Estimate line F |
| £322.6bn | Total social security spending (pensioner + working-age + children)Of which pensioner benefits alone are £177.7bn — dwarfing the asylum figure on the same annual, observed basis. | Great Britain · 2025/26 | KNOWN | DWP, Benefit expenditure and caseload tables |
| 34.5% | OBR-projected age-related spending as a share of GDP in 2075-76 (26.3% in 2025-26)A long-term MODELLED projection, not an observed annual spend figure — never place this share of GDP on the same scale as the £4.2bn or £322.6bn ANNUAL figures above without saying so, which this card does explicitly. The OBR’s “total age-related spending” is a broad grouping (health, adult social care, education, State Pension, other welfare benefits and public service pensions), it is a projection of the UK population as a whole, and it contains no asylum line. It rises 8.2 percentage points of GDP over 50 years. The table gives 2035-36 and 2045-46 but not 2040, so no 2040 figure is quoted. | United Kingdom · Projected, 2075-76 (baseline, unchanged policy) | MODELLED | OBR, Fiscal risks and sustainability (July 2026), Table 3.1, p.51 |
- The £4.2bn asylum figure and the age-related spending projection (a share of GDP to 2075-76) are NOT on the same basis: one is an observed annual spend, the other a modelled long-term share of a growing economy — never subtract or net one against the other.
- Asylum seekers are not the same population driving the ageing-related projection, which is about the existing resident population living longer — this card does not imply they are the same demographic story.
Verified against primary sources: 2026-10-24.