The Azure card

Maryam fled Somalia in 2007 after her son and daughter disappeared. Like many her application for asylum has been refused, but the state accepts that it cannot send her back to her home country as her life would be in danger. She is forced to live on just £5 a day by the British state. The sum can’t be spent as she likes because it is loaded on to a Government-issued card which can only be used in certain supermarkets. She has the so-called Azure Card, which gives her the £5-a-day allowance. It means she can’t get a bus and cannot get the halal food she requires as a Muslim, and the card is often not recognised even by staff in the stores where it should be used.

“I am standing there, with a queue behind me,” she said. “That is when the humiliation starts. They make me feel as if I am a thief. Sometimes I have had to wait for half an hour until the manager comes, because the staff do not know about the card.”
A survey of asylum seekers revealed more than half did not have money to travel to see a doctor or lawyer, 40% could not buy food that satisfied their religious requirements, 40% had had the card refused at supermarkets, and 56% felt anxious and ashamed when using it.

John Wilkes, chief executive of the Scottish Refugee Council, said: “The Azure Card is forcing asylum seekers into unnecessary hunger and hardship. This payment system doesn’t just restrict what they can buy and where, but often it doesn’t work at all. People who have to get by on the Azure Card are either waiting to return to their countries of origin, or cannot do so because it is unsafe. The UK Government doesn’t allow them to work and support themselves.”