The Home Office has an answer for British taxpayers wondering why they bought 974 hijabs for small-boat migrants: the rules require it. Conservatives would like those handouts stopped.
Government documents obtained by the Mail on Sunday record the distribution between January and June. The newspaper estimates the number could be nearing 1,500 now, based on the same monthly rate. For anything beyond the June count, that remains an estimate. How much taxpayers spent wasn’t reported.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp called for an immediate end to the practice:
“It’s an insult to hard-working British taxpayers that they’re funding religious items for people who have broken into our country. It should not be for us to fund someone else’s religious practices.”
Asked about the hijabs, a Home Office source referred to the Short-term Holding Facility Rules. The source said basic clothing provision has to cover religious and cultural items, too:
“All arrivals receive a basic dry clothing pack where required. The items available form part of standard welfare arrangements.”
Men received 10,694 clothing packs during the period covered by the records; women received 2,670. There were children’s packs as well, with beanie hats and babygrows among the other supplies listed. Philp singled out the hijabs. The department answered with an explanation of the whole clothing program.
His colleague Laura Trott has been pressing the government on hijabs in school uniforms, telling the Mail on Sunday she does not believe “the state should be party to an instrument of female suppression.” Education Secretary Lucy Powell has said requiring young girls to wear the hijab is unacceptable. Trott praised that, but said the government has done nothing about it.
The two debates are not the same. Compelling a child to wear religious dress at school is a different act from handing a garment to an adult who may want it. But the Conservatives are now running both arguments simultaneously, and the government is on the defensive on both.
Philp also wants migrants returned to the safe country they left. In his remarks, he pointed to France and called for Britain to leave the European Convention on Human Rights so illegal arrivals could be deported immediately.
The trouble for ministers is that their own returns scheme has stopped accepting cases.
By October 1, Britain had sent about 1,500 people back to France through the “one in, one out” pilot. Slightly fewer asylum seekers had traveled in the other direction, having applied through a legal route. British ministers wanted to keep it going. France reportedly sought a Europe-wide agreement instead. Flights for people already detained will continue in the coming weeks.
More than 19,000 people have crossed by small boat this year. That’s down 42 percent from the same point in 2025, and the Home Office says it recorded the fewest summer arrivals since 2020. The fall gives ministers something to point to, though it leaves thousands arriving outside the legal route.
For those new arrivals, the French pilot is no longer an option. The clothing arrangements remain in place. Philp might have more patience with the second if the government had managed to keep the first.
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