The Japan Times - UK sees record asylum claims as row brews over housing

Immigration is a thorny issue in the UK, where Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer is struggling to stem rising support for a hard-right party led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage.

His Reform UK campaigners are tapping into anger over record numbers of undocumented migrants making the dangerous crossing the Channel from France to England small boats.

A total of 111,084 people applied for asylum in the UK in the year to June 2025, according to figures released by the Home Office, the UK's interior ministry.

That was the highest for any 12-month period since current records began in 2001.

Farage said Britain's "streets are becoming more dangerous yet this disaster gets worse". The government has insisted it is "restoring order" to the asylum system.

"We have strengthened Britain's visa and immigration controls, cut asylum costs and sharply increased enforcement and returns," said interior minister Yvette Cooper.

The statistics showed that while asylum claims are up, officials are processing those applications faster than before as they seek to clear a backlog.

At the end of June, some 91,000 people were awaiting a decision, down 24 percent on the previous year, the Home Office said.

- Hotel ban -

Starmer's government views clearing the backlog of cases as essential to fulfilling its pledge to end the use of hotels to house asylum seekers by the end of this parliament in 2029.

Under a 1999 law, the interior ministry "is required to provide accommodation and subsistence support to all destitute asylum seekers whilst their asylum claims are being decided".

But the use of hotels, which hit peak levels under the previous centre-right Conservative government, costs Britain billions of pounds -- and they also have become flashpoints for sometimes violent protests.

The Home Office data showed that 32,059 migrants were staying in hotels at the end of June.

That is an eight-percent increase on the same month last year -- just before Starmer became prime minister -- but well below the high of 56,042, recorded at the end of September 2023.

Labour has said the use of migrant hotels has fallen from a high of 400 two years ago to around 230 presently.

Thursday's figures also showed that spending on asylum had fallen 12 percent from £5.38 billion in 2023/24 to £4.76 billion in 2024/25.

More than 50,000 people have crossed the Channel since Starmer became UK leader in July last year, including almost 28,000 this year -- a record since data began in 2018 for this stage of a year.

The Home Office data showed that irregular arrivals soared 27 percent on the previous year, with 88 percent of those coming by small boats.

Starmer's government has signed several agreements with countries as it tries to break up gangs of people-smugglers facilitating the crossings.

It penned a new returns deal with Iraq this week and has struck a "one-in, one-out" pilot programme with Paris, which allows Britain to send some small-boats arrivals back to France.

On Tuesday, a high court judge temporarily blocked the housing of asylum seekers at a hotel near London following protests after a resident there was charged with sexual assault.

Several Reform-led councils have vowed to seek similar injunctions which, if granted, would pose a major logistical headache for the government.

K.Okada--JT