‘Woeful’ budgeting behind asylum overspends, says IFS

Despite this, the IFS highlighted how the same pattern appeared to be playing out again this year, with the Home Office already saying its estimated asylum spending for the year would not be “sufficient”, despite a £1.5bn top-up.

Last month Chancellor Rachel Reeves put an estimated £6.4bn asylum overspend at the heart of a £22bn “black hole” in spending for this year which she said she had inherited from the Conservatives.

The IFS said it understood that the £6.4bn included the £1.5bn top-up already requested.

An additional £4bn was “almost inevitable” on top of that, it added, despite an estimated £800m saving from scrapping the previous government’s Rwanda deportation scheme.

Mr Warner warned that, while top-ups had previously been made from the Treasury’s reserves, the reserves available for this year seemed to have already been earmarked for elsewhere, and so might not be available this time round.

A Labour spokesperson accused the previous Tory government of having “covered up the true extent of the crisis” in the Home Office.

“They knowingly overspent on departmental budgets, covered it up, called an election and ran away from the problem, leaving a £22 billion black hole in the country’s finances for Labour to clean up,” they told BBC News.

The Home Office and the Conservatives have been contacted for comment.