Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether his Department plans to allow asylum seekers waiting for a decision to have access to free ESOL classes.

Not everyone who makes their own way to the UK to seek asylum will be found to have valid claims to be refugees and many will have travelled through other safe countries to get to the UK. The Government does not fund English classes for asylum seekers.

Asylum seekers aged 19 or over become eligible for a 50% contribution to the costs of English language classes through the Adult Education Budget, when they have been legally in the UK for longer than six months and are awaiting a decision on their asylum claim, or have failed in their claim but have been granted support under the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999.