The opera for asylum seekers... and other lottery 'good causes' that cost £6.7million a year

The amount of National Lottery cash handed to organisations for asylum seekers trebled last year, it was revealed yesterday.

The money paid for a string of projects including encouraging them to play football and producing an opera.

In all, more than £6.7million went to asylum causes in a year in which the number arriving in the country to claim refuge fell to its lowest in more than a decade.

The leap in the scale of money sent to such organisations by the various lottery good cause boards came in a year when the concern over the use of the money was focused on the billions diverted by the Government to the 2012 Olympics.

Yesterday Tory MPs said the level of spending on asylum causes was unfair and divisive.

"I don't think it is what people want to see their money spent on," said Andrew Rosindell, MP for Romford.

"People expect good cause money to go to organisations that benefit everybody, rather than to a particular and narrow section.

"This is especially so when they think many asylum seekers have come here for economic reasons rather than to escape persecution."

Lottery spending peaked at more than £10million in 2004 and then fell to £2,156,248 in 2006.

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But figures supplied by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport show that it went back up to £6,723,958 last year.

Among the grants was one by the Awards for All board to the Wolverhampton Grand Theatre to help young asylum seekers "write and produce and opera and an animated film".

The same board provided £5,000 for Iranian asylum seekers to "share their experiences through art", £9,400 to a Birmingham group to "celebrate friendships between asylum seekers and people born in the UK" and £4,690 to provide advice to Congolese asylum seekers in Stoke.

The grants were made at a time when ministers at the Communities Department were publishing guidelines that said state money should not be paid to individual national and cultural groups to avoid encouraging separatism.

The biggest asylum grant was £1million paid by the New Opportunities Fund to the Scottish Refugee Council "to challenge and change misconceptions about asylum seekers".

Various refugee bodies were paid to help different groups play football or volleyball.

The biggest of these went to Strathclyde Police, given nearly £458,000 by the Big Lottery Fund to "integrate asylum seekers into local communities through sport".

The Big Lottery Fund replaced the discredited Community Fund, closed down after the Daily Mail revealed five years ago it had given £340,000 to a group devoted to helping failed asylum seekers fight deportation.