No, We're Not Paying to Give TV Licences to Migrants
The Bear examines how Reform UK used a scheme designed to support vulnerable children in care, in order to feed an outrage machine that values virality over veracity
On June 15th, 2025, Zia Yusuf — former Chairman of Reform UK — posted an explosive claim that would rack up over a million views: "Kent County Council is using taxpayer money to pay for TV licences for asylum seekers. Remember that next time you are asked to pay for yours."
You can guess what happened next. Feral outrage. Rapid amplification. Retweets cascading through the usual ecosystem of manufactured resentment. "They're getting free TVs while you're stuck with the licence fee!" Reform supporters latched on immediately, transforming a single unsourced tweet into yet another grievance against the establishment's supposed betrayal of "ordinary people."
But there was just one problem.
It wasn't true.
How a Lie Travels Faster Than Truth
The statement came with no source. No council documents. No budget lines. No quotes from officials. Just a vague assertion, tossed out like fact — perfect fodder for an outrage machine that values virality over veracity.
So I did the obvious thing: I wrote to Mr Yusuf. Eight straightforward questions — about sources, spending, legality, and whether he’d actually spoken to the council. Not a hit job. Just basic due diligence.
The response? Silence.
But someone else did reply — a Kent County Councillor, privately, and clearly fed up with watching a lie go viral while the truth got throttled by the algorithm.
What Kent County Council Actually Does
What the councillor revealed demolished Yusuf's narrative entirely. Here's their full statement:
I understand that the publicly available information that the former chairman of Reform UK is using clearly states that the spend is for Kent Permanent Care Leavers and Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children1. It is not for adult asylum seekers, and it is not for individuals. The costs that are being referred to are for those buildings where vulnerable children are being temporarily housed and KCC's costs for supporting UASC are met by the Home Office. On this basis, there is no cost to the Kent taxpayer. [my emphasis]
Some of our Kent looked-after children and care leavers who came to us as UAS Children live in shared accommodation which KCC contracts through Ready Homes. For these looked-after children KCC's Home Office grant pays for the TV licences for the house they live in. It also pays for TV licences for the UAS Children reception centres in Kent. We also have Kent young people who are looked after and live in shared accommodation, and the council funds the TV licences for them. Between 2024-25 the Council also funded the TV licenses of 22 Kent Care Leavers as part as our local offer in their setting up home allowance of which 7 were previous UAS children in care.
In line with the High Court determination of July 20232 all unaccompanied asylum-seeking children and young people who arrive at Dover must be taken into Kent County Council's care and as such become our looked after children. They have the same status and rights in law as any other child who comes into care. Home Office grants, not council tax, fund the costs of looking after Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children.
Our care leavers are those Kent children who may have been in foster care or residential care or other arrangements outside their immediate or extended family. Kent County Council has a statutory responsibility to these vulnerable children and young people.
Read that again. Every single element of Yusuf's inflammatory claim falls apart:
It's not about adult asylum seekers. It’s about Unaccompanied Asylum-Seeking Children (UASC) — minors who arrive in the UK alone, many having been trafficked, orphaned, or displaced by conflict.
They become looked-after children with full statutory protections. Once in care, these children have exactly the same legal status and rights as any other child in the system— because that's what they are. Children.
The TV licences aren't for individuals. They're for shared accommodation, reception centres, and other facilities where these vulnerable young people are housed. It's not "free TVs for migrants" — it's basic facilities for children in institutional care.
The Home Office pays, not local taxpayers. As the councillor made crystal clear: "On this basis, there is no cost to the Kent taxpayer."
This Isn't a Mistake — It's Strategy
Strip away the specific details about TV licences and asylum seekers, and what you're left with is a depressingly familiar pattern that defines modern populist politics:
Inflame, don't explain. Find a government expenditure that can be presented as outrageous to people who don't understand the context. The more bureaucratic and technical, the better — fewer people will have the knowledge to challenge it immediately.
Target the vulnerable to mobilise the resentful. Asylum seekers, particularly children, make perfect targets because they can't defend themselves in the public discourse and their legal protections seem like "special treatment" to people who don't understand how child welfare works.
Refuse accountability when challenged. When presented with evidence that contradicts the narrative, simply ignore it. The lie has already done its work — correcting it would only draw attention to your methodology.
This wasn't an innocent misunderstanding. The pattern reveals itself when you realise that Reform had multiple opportunities to verify their claim, correct the record, or engage with the actual facts. They chose not to, because accuracy was never the point.
The point was the emotional payload: they are taking your money and giving it to people who don't deserve it. The details — whether it's true, whether taxpayers actually pay, whether we're talking about children rather than adults — are completely irrelevant to that core message.
Who They’re Willing to Throw Under the Bus
These lies don’t stay on Twitter. They shape public opinion, warp policy debates, and hurt real people.
When politicians and commentators push false claims about spending on asylum seekers, they’re not just misleading voters — they’re fuelling suspicion and hostility toward vulnerable children who’ve already endured more than most of us can imagine.
The High Court ruling in July 2023 didn’t come from nowhere. It affirmed that these children need protection not just from what they’ve fled, but from a system that could otherwise neglect them. Reform UK turning that duty into a political football isn’t just an attack on spending — it’s an attack on the principle that we care for vulnerable children, no matter where they come from.
Yusuf’s framing suggests that a TV licence for a shared home of trafficked or orphaned minors is a betrayal of British taxpayers. That a basic facility — funded by the Home Office — is theft from “ordinary people.” That displaced children should be thankful for a roof and nothing else.
This is the grim arithmetic of culture war politics: turning child welfare into a zero-sum game. As if protecting them takes something away from us. As if compassion is a finite resource, and cruelty is the currency of strength.
We Deserve Better Politics — and Better People
What happened here is simple: Zia Yusuf spread a lie. Not a misunderstanding. Not a difference of opinion. A demonstrably false claim about public spending. And when challenged, he chose silence over correction.
The councillor who contacted me confirmed the truth: this is about fulfilling our legal and moral duty to vulnerable children—many of them traumatised, trafficked, or orphaned. The spending came from central government grants, not council tax. And the supposed scandal? It amounted to £1,113 for seven shared TV licences. That’s it. All this noise over barely a grand.
What we’re dealing with isn’t concern about public spending — it’s a political movement so desperate for outrage that it manufactures enemies out of children. A movement that knows lies go viral, corrections don’t, and that nuance never trends.
If your politics requires inventing villains out of orphaned kids, it’s failed. If your leaders won’t correct falsehoods even when shown evidence, they’re unfit to lead.
The children in Kent’s care didn’t ask to become political props. They just need safety, support, and a fighting chance at rebuilding their lives.
They deserve better than to be exploited for engagement. And we deserve better than leaders who bank on our ignorance.
This was never about TV licences. It was about who we choose to be: a country that protects vulnerable children — or one that turns them into headlines.
Kent County Council chose care. Reform UK chose to wage a culture war.
That tells you everything you need to know about Reform UK’s priorities.
(This article first appeared on Bearly Politics on 27 June 2025)
Footnotes:
1 Kent Permanent Care Leavers and Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children Policy can be accessed here.
2 ECPAT UK v Kent County Council & SSHD Ruling Passed on 27 July 2023 can be accessed here.
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It’s sad that many people are ready to believe these lies. Maybe schools might teach critical thinking