Home Office spent record £5.38bn on asylum over past year
The Home Office spent a record £5.38bn over the last year on asylum – more than a third higher than the previous year.
Figures released on Thursday showed spending on asylum rose by £1.43bn in the 2023/24 financial year to £5.38bn – 36% higher than in 2022/24 when £3.95bn was spent.
The latest figure, covering the Conservatives’ final year in government, is the highest amount since comparable data began in 2010/11.
It is more than four times the equivalent figure for 2020/21 (£1.34bn) and nearly 12 times the total a decade ago in 2013/14 when it was £450m.
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New data has also found the number of asylum claimants living in hotels has increased since Labour came into power in July.
The Home Office costs cover all its spending on asylum, including direct cash support and accommodation for asylum seekers, plus wider staffing and other related migration and border activity.
It does not include the cost of operations responding to Channel crossings and intercepting migrants as they make the journey to the UK.
However, the data suggests most migrants entering the UK on small boats do then end up in the asylum system.
Hotels are being used to house asylum seekers as other accommodation is full
Since Labour came into power, 19,988 people have crossed the Channel on small boats to get to the UK illegally.
The latest asylum spending data is from when the Conservatives were in power and comes as further data revealed net migration to the UK fell by 20% in the year to June 2024 from a record 906,000 the year before.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) found net migration – the difference been people immigrating and emigrating – stands at an estimated 728,000.
Sir Keir Starmer said his party had inherited an “utter mess” from the Tories as he accused them of reforming policies to “liberalise immigration” and having “lost control of the borders”.
He said the government was “taking a different approach” by cracking down on any abuse of visa routes, setting out a plan to reduce immigration and “smash the gangs” taking people across the Channel.
The prime minister said the cost of processing asylum claims needs to be brought down, as does the use of hotels.
He said the government has redeployed 1,000 Home Office staff to process asylum claims, and said his government has returned 9,600 asylum seekers since July.
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Number of asylum seekers in hotels soars
New Home Office data has also revealed 106,181 asylum claimants were in accommodation at the end of September. That is an increase of 9,539 from May this year.
Of those 106,181 asylum seekers, 35,651 were being housed temporarily in hotels due to lack of other accommodation at the end of September, up by 6,066 from 29,585 at the end of June.
It is the first quarterly rise for a year, although the figure is still some way below the recent peak of 56,042 at the end of September 2023.
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‘We don’t know anything about them’
Labour promised to close asylum hotels in their manifesto, but border security minister Dame Angela Eagle last week said more asylum hotels have opened since the party came into power.
She told parliament there are currently 220 hotels in use for asylum seekers, with seven having shut since July – but 14 more have opened.
Dame Angela said the reason was the situation left by the Conservatives, with 116,000 asylum seekers “stuck in a backlog” of more than two years when Labour came into power in July.
She said the system “ground to a standstill” because the Tories were busy pursuing the Rwanda policy “which was doomed to failure”.
The minister said Labour did not commit “to close all asylum hotels within four months”.
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Kemi Badenoch will be “defined” by the first “clanger” she makes as Tory leader, Baroness Davidson has said.
The Tory peer said Ms Badenoch, who replaced Rishi Sunak earlier this month, had to be “humble and work bloody hard” in her role following the Conservatives’ worst-ever general election performance.
Speaking to Beth Rigby on the Electoral Dysfunction podcast, Baroness Davidson criticised the Tory leader for choosing to give a speech at the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) on the impact of Labour’s decision to increase employers’ national insurance contributions in the budget.
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During the speech, Ms Badenoch refused to say whether she would reverse the national insurance hike – despite calling it a “tax on jobs”.
Baroness Davidson told Rigby: “If I was in charge of the UK Tory party right now, if I wanted to do a business speech, I wouldn’t have done it at the CBI.
“I would have done it at the Federation of Small Businesses – the people that are most affected by this national insurance change.
“I would have been damn sure what my policy was going to be and what it was that I was going to be able to tell them.”
The Tory peer, who led the Scottish Conservatives from 2011 to 2019, said the job of an Opposition leader was to “go out and hustle” for votes.
She added: “It’s to speak to people… it’s to apologise for the stuff we got wrong, it’s to show people that we’ve changed, and it’s to start putting together slowly, bit by bit, a policy platform that can lead us into the next election in five years’ time.”
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Davidson’s advice for Tory leader
Baroness Davidson said there had been “so many open goals” for Ms Badenoch to take against the prime minister, including over his decision to scrap winter fuel payments for the majority of pensioners.
“Why is she not going off and speaking to pensioners?” Baroness Davidson said.
“We’ve got great stories to tell [on the winter fuel allowance]. Now, as we’re coming into this cold snap, she could have been doing something about that.”
She added: “She can’t be high-handed about this and she can’t be lazy. She has to be humble and she has to work bloody hard!”
Asked whether she thought Ms Badenoch was “lazy”, Baroness Davidson said: “I don’t know what her personal tempo of operations is and how she runs her office, she might be doing tonnes of things that we’re not seeing, but there’s a problem in that. We’re not seeing them.
“There is a massive klaxon going off in my head here because if Labour have worked out that she’s not defining herself, it doesn’t take an awful lot of steps to decide, ‘Well, we can define her ourselves’.
“And it will not be in a way that is helpful to the Conservative Party. They’ll wait for the first clanger and the first clanger is what will define her.”
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