The home secretary has said government action to tackle asylum numbers is an important step to “restoring order”, as new figures showed the number of asylum seekers housed in hotels has risen by 8% to 32,059 in a year. Yvette Cooper said Labour had increased returns of failed asylum seekers and cut costs since taking office.
Responding to the latest Home Office statistics, Cooper said the government had inherited a “broken immigration and asylum system” and pointed to a 30% rise in returns of failed asylum seekers, an 11% cut in asylum costs, and an 18% reduction in the backlog. She also noted a 48% fall in work visas this year.
The Home Office data, published on Thursday, covers Labour’s first year in office. For the first time in four years, the asylum applications backlog has fallen below 100,000 people, standing at just over 70,000 cases relating to almost 91,000 people – down 18% from a year earlier and the lowest since September 2021.
Enforced returns of people without the right to stay in the UK reached 9,072 in the year to June, up 25% from 7,253 the previous year and the highest 12-month figure since the year to December 2018. Quarterly enforced returns rose slightly from 2,314 in January-March 2025 to 2,323 in April-June.
The Refugee Council welcomed “initial progress” on the backlog but said there were still “far too many people in hotels”, describing hotels as “the wrong answer” that cost taxpayers billions and trapped people in limbo. Cooper said the government’s forthcoming plans to overhaul the asylum appeal system and new pilot with France were further steps to restore control.
