The Home Office has paid asylum seekers £1 an hour to carry out more than a million hours of work in the past five years, openDemocracy can reveal.

The government has been accused of exploitation after documents seen by this website showed detainees in immigration centres run by Home Office contractors are working hundreds of thousands of hours a year for meagre wages.

Detainees’ roles vary, but include cleaners, welfare buddies, kitchen assistants, barbers, laundry orderlies, painters, gym orderlies and shop assistants.

One person who works in an immigration detention centre told openDemocracy that the centre he is being held in is reliant on this low-paid work.

The Home Office and the private firms running the centres claim work is offered to relieve detainees’ boredom and is popular. But experts say that such poor wages, which have not been raised in 15 years, can “never be ethical”.

Records obtained under Freedom of Information laws reveal that detainees carried out more than 385,000 hours of paid work in 2018 and 325,460 in 2019. The hours worked fell during the pandemic – to 163,600 in 2020 and 126,700 in 2021 – when detainee numbers were reduced due to safety concerns, before rising to 215,000 last year.

The wages are funded by the Home Office, although they are paid to the detainees by the private contractors running the detention centres, which are responsible for overseeing the work.

One man, who wishes to remain anonymous, spoke to openDemocracy from inside a detention centre. He said his centre relies on detainees working, but that they do not receive any training – meaning work is not being done to a standard that is safe.

“They need to train the people how to clean. It’s very important,” he said. “Some of the [kitchen equipment] was dirty, had never been washed. They need to clean it properly so it’s safe.”

The man, who had been in the UK for a decade before being detained, added: “I’m a good worker. It helps the time move fast. If you're not working you’re just thinking, thinking, but it’s just something to do. It doesn't matter about the money, but I feel better when I work.”

Nasrin Warsame, a research and policy coordinator at the charity Bail for Immigration Detainees, told openDemocracy: “Offering £1 an hour for work can never be ethical. The reality is that this policy preys on how restricted people are, taking advantage of them to accept such low wages.”

She added: “Detention deprives people of freedom, liberty and movement, and ‘choices’ to work within those walls cannot be obtusely separated from this exploitative context. People deserve to be free in society and have their full agency realised to decide when and where they would like to work and with decent, fair pay.”

Immigration detention, an administrative process rather than a criminal justice procedure, refers to the Home Office’s practice of detaining foreign nationals while their immigration status is resolved, according to Oxford University’s Migration Observatory.

The majority of people in the centres are asylum seekers, with 81% of new detainees in 2021 having previously claimed asylum in the UK.

‘Reducing contractors’ overheads’

£1 an hour is the fixed rate for detainees’ ‘regular work’ under Home Office legislation. It has not been raised since the policy’s introduction in 2008, despite current inflation of around 10%.

For some ‘special projects’, detainees can be paid up to £1.25 an hour but these are rare, with nobody paid more than £1 per hour last year.

In 2017, five detainees brought a legal challenge against the home secretary, arguing that they carried out “work of real value” and should be paid at least minimum wage for it.

Two of the five detainees said they had never seen their centre cleaned by anybody other than detainees. At least one had completed 14 months of paid work while detained and some had been promoted to supervisory roles but were still being paid just £1 per hour.

Several complained about the unpleasant nature of the cleaning and other menial work they did in the centre, compared to their occupations prior to detention. They also said they worked in the centre because they needed the money.

The challenge was unsuccessful, with a judge finding in 2019 that the wages were not unlawful because the detainees were not forced to work. The following year, the Court of Appeal also dismissed an appeal by the detainees.

Simon Robinson, a lawyer at Duncan Lewis, the law firm that represented the detainees, told openDemocracy: “The roles which are undertaken are all necessary to effectively operate the detention centres. If detainees were not doing the jobs, the centre operators would have to employ people to do so.”

He added that “the opportunity to work is a privilege in detention centres” and is often withheld or threatened to be withheld “if detainees are not complying with the [Home Office] requests in their immigration case, or for other issues.”

Although the detainees are not forced to work, Robinson said: “There is plainly a link between the work which is undertaken by the detainees and the potential for a reduction in the centre operators’ overheads”.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “The longstanding practice of offering paid activities to people in immigration removal centres has been praised by His Majesty's Inspectorate of Prisons as it helps to keep them occupied whilst their removal is being arranged.

“This practice is not a substitute for the work of trained staff and while participation is entirely voluntary, the number of individuals volunteering for paid activities across the detention estate is evidence that the jobs are popular.”