Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how much his Department spent on refugee integration loans in each year since 2007.

Refugee Integration Loans were introduced in 2007 following a public consultation and are intended to help people with the costs of integrating into UK society. They are funded by the Home Office, who make the initial decisions on applications. They are then administered and recouped by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

Refugee integration loans are interest-free loans with favourable repayment terms for individuals who are over 18 and meet the following eligibility criteria:

• a refugee;
• you have humanitarian protection;
• a dependant of a refugee or someone with humanitarian protection.

Individuals are currently able to borrow between £100 and £500. Between £100 to £780 can be borrowed if submitting a joint application with a partner.

All loan repayments are expected in full and money recovered can be recycled to provide funds for new refugees

The Home Office work with DWP to administer the loans across different IT platforms. Consequently, data is not held in an easily reportable format and would require a manual search of records that would incur a disproportionate cost.