Many claims are refused, but the sheer numbers have resulted in unacceptable delays.”David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, reacted angrily to the judgment and said the Government would mount an appeal early next month.”This measure is an important part of our asylum reform programme, which is dealing with widespread abuse of the system and reducing unfounded claims,” he said. “It is simple common sense that asylum-seekers should lodge their claim as soon as they arrive if they expect support from the Government. He said: “The only route now through this chaos is to abolish the whole asylum system and replace it by a rational system of quotas for genuine refugees,” he said.Shami Chakrabarti, a spokeswoman for the civil rights group Liberty, described the judge’s ruling as an “important victory for human decency”. She said: “To deny individuals access to food and shelter and potentially leave them to starve or freeze on Britain’s streets is a degrading, humiliating and wholly unacceptable policy.”The judge ruled that the human rights convention was not automatically breached by refusing aid to someone who was destitute. What had to be established was “a real risk” of destitution leading to injury to health.

But “insufficient consideration” had been given to the issue and the decisions made in the case of the six in his court “must be quashed and reconsidered, if that has not already happened”.The judge added: “The individual’s reasons for not claiming must be considered and that means at least asking about the pressures on him, what he was told and what his beliefs were.”Mr Justice Collins said that in each of the six cases there had been a breach of article 6 of the human rights convention because of the absence of any right of appeal against the decision to refuse benefits.Human rights lawyers had argued that to leave someone destitute would breach article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibited inhuman or degrading treatment. The judge said: “It is clear that there is no duty on a state to provide a home. It may even be that there is no duty to provide any form of social security.”But Mr Justice Collins said he was satisfied “there will normally be a real risk” that to leave someone destitute would violate their human rights.Margaret Lally, acting chief executive of the Refugee Council, was encouraged by the judgment. “Every day asylum-seekers are arriving at our doors freezing cold, hungry, exhausted and confused.”The six refugee cases The six refugees claiming political asylum came to Britain last month.Q is a 20-year-old Iraqi Kurd who arrived in London by lorry He spent his first night in “a tunnel by a telephone box”. He approached immigration authorities at Croydon in south London.

He was refused support because of the “lack of detail” in his answers on his journey to the UK. The judge said he had poor legal advice.F is a 37-year-old Angolan soldier arrested and accused of spying who escaped and came overland He was sent to Newcastle airport to make his claim. His plea for assistance was rejected because immigration officers were not satisfied he was unable to claim asylum at the airport. But Mr Justice Collins said F’s account should have been investigated further.M, a 42-year-old Rwandan Hutu woman, was raped and beaten by Tutsi soldiers She escaped to Uganda and flew to London. She claimed asylum at Croydon but was refused support because she could have claimed at the airport. The judge said her story might have been difficult to accept “but it does not necessarily show she did not arrive when she says she did”.B is a 16-year-old Ethiopian whose father had been suspected of involvement in a proscribed political movement She arrived at Heathrow without being questioned She spent the night at the airport “in tears”.