The Home Office bends over backwards to avoid accusations of being a “soft touch” when it comes to asylum seekers. Being ultra-tough may not always be the cheapest way to manage people seeking sanctuary, but it’s certainly an effective public relations tactic.

Detaining the thousands of asylum seekers each year who are not removed but subsequently released, transporting them around the country to frequently changing accommodation and appealing against the decisions of tribunal judges to grant asylum to those with strong cases all gobble up lots of public money that could be better spent elsewhere.

In a new era of official nastiness, it’s suddenly a crime to be homeless | John Harris Read more

It’s probably nothing personal on the part of the Home Office. But there’s no doubt that the individual asylum seekers on the receiving end of these policies are silent and invisible collateral damage.

They don’t complain publicly, tweet criticism of the government or write letters to newspapers. They’ve run for their lives and they’re far too scared to do any of that. It’s bad enough to be told you’re lying about the persecution you’ve fled when you are telling the truth, but even worse to be forced to sleep on the streets when you’ve been denied even the basic accommodation the Home Office’s own rules should entitle you to.

The story of Maria (whose name has been changed) is a particularly disturbing example. She fled persecution in a country to which there is no realistic prospect of returning her. After her asylum claim was refused she spent several years doing what many asylum seekers do – sleeping rough in stations, on the night bus, outside or on a good night on a friend’s floor.

One night last year, when she was preparing to sleep at a station, a man from her country of origin invited her to his home. Instead of giving her shelter she was drugged, raped and became pregnant. Since then, she has mostly been surviving on just one meal a day from friends and charities. The Home Office is supposed to provide accommodation in the 34th week of pregnancy. That date has been and gone. Maria is still homeless and the baby could be born at any time.

According to figures released last September just 4,173 asylum seekers were in receipt of the Section 4 support she has requested – no choice accommodation and a charge card with £35.39 per week on it to be used to buy food in supermarkets. Section 4 support is for destitute asylum seekers whose claims have been refused – they may be eligible for this support for several reasons, including no realistic prospect of them being returned to their country or advanced pregnancy.

Maria submitted a package of evidence to the Home Office with her application – a letter from her midwife about when the baby is due, a letter from the friend whose floor she sometimes slept on, along with other evidence. But this has not satisfied the Home Office. They have asked her to provide a further nine pieces of information before they will consider her case, including details of bank accounts (she has none), details of where she has been staying during all the years she has been street homeless – including signed letters from any friends she might have stayed with, however briefly. Worst of all, the Home Office is pushing her to provide full details of the baby’s father – name, date of birth, immigration status and location. Maria felt too scared and ashamed to discuss the circumstances of the conception but now the Home Office has forced her to do so. Will “rapist, whereabouts unknown” satisfy them?

While the Home Office puts more expensive staff resources into demanding information from Maria the birth draws nearer. Her distress is enormous: she is dealing not only with the legacy of persecution in her home country, the harsh treatment she has received from the Home Office and her ordeal trying to survive as a homeless woman in London for several years, but also the trauma of the rape and the pain of imminently delivering a baby conceived in such violent circumstances.

If the Home Office fails to make a decision to provide her with basic shelter before her baby is born, it will be one fewer person to add to their accommodation statistics, and just a bit more of that collateral damage we so rarely get to hear about.