Newly released Home Office data paints a mixed picture of how the government’s asylum seeker strategy is working out.
The number of asylum seekers housed in hotels – a current political flashpoint – has risen slightly compared to when it came to power. However the figures are far below the 2023 peak, when the Conservatives were in government, the new data shows.
The number of asylum applications in the UK during the year to June also reached a new record of 111,000 – though the government has reduced the backlog of claims by processing them faster.
In addition, in the year to June, about 38% more small boats landed on UK shores than the previous year.
BBC correspondents Jack Fenwick and Dominic Casciani assess what the figures tell us about the effectiveness of the government’s asylum strategy.
Strategy could be working but long way still to go
By political correspondent Jack Fenwick
Headlines about record numbers of asylum applications and an increase in hotel use since Labour came to power clearly don’t make comfortable reading for ministers.
But the overall view in the Home Office on Thursday morning, according to one source, was “not disappointed”.
And there is evidence that elements of the government’s strategy could be working, despite those headlines.
This is the first data that takes into account the huge rise in small boat crossings since March.
A few months ago, some people inside the Home Office had been worried that hotel use could spike as a result.
But that hasn’t happened. The number of asylum seekers in hotels actually went slightly down between March and June.
Ministers have been trying to find alternative sources of accommodation, like regular houses and flats – but those numbers haven’t gone up either.
By processing claims more quickly, the Home Office has been able to ensure that the big rise in small boat crossings hasn’t had much of an effect on asylum accommodation.
Ending the use of hotels was a Labour manifesto pledge and ministers have a long, long way to go before they get close to achieving it.
Opposition parties say the government’s record on illegal immigration will ultimately be judged on the small boat crossing numbers, which remain at stubborn, record-breaking highs.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp claims the numbers would be at zero if his party’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda had been implemented.
Labour scrapped the idea and a senior Home Office source says they’ve been able to speed up initial asylum applications by moving many of those staff over to that team.
The same source also tried to shift some of the political onus going forward onto the Ministry of Justice (MoJ).
While initial asylum claims are being processed more quickly, there’s increasing concern over what’s happening in the appeals courts.
The Home Office source said “courts are definitely a pinch point and we do need the MoJ to step up and help us with that”.
A former justice secretary told us these types of appeals backlogs are often caused by “poor casework management” from the Home Office during the initial application phase.
There’s clear potential for tension between two parts of government in the coming months.
Ending hotel use still a huge challenge
By home and legal correspondent Dominic Casciani
The government’s ultimate aim is to convince the public that it has better control of the immigration and asylum system than its predecessors and anyone potentially waiting in the wings such as Reform.
This makes these stats complicated for both them and their opponents.
The good news for the government is that officials are processing more cases than a year ago, meaning that over the long term there may be fewer people in the system needing housing support.
The smaller the backlog, the less the government needs to spend. The total asylum support bill has fallen to £4.8bn in 2024-25, down from £5.4bn the year before.
But now for the bad news.
More people who have been told they have no case are appealing. Those people are then stuck in the system until they either win or lose their appeal.
And that’s part of the reason why the Home Office is making only modest progress on the use of hotels – a move brought in by the last government after it ran out of alternative accommodation around the UK.
The government can show it has increased removals from the UK of people at the end of the process. However more than half of removals are not failed asylum applicants but foreign national offenders leaving prison.
Removals of small boat migrants are modest and many of these are legally low-hanging fruit, such as the brief phenomenon of a rush of Albanian nationals.
Crucially though the number of people voluntarily leaving has gone up by 13% to 26,761. They are paid up to £3,000 to go – but that’s far cheaper than battling through the courts. This is a win for government.
Four other critical factors will play a huge role in this challenge.
The government’s plan to strengthen counter-smuggling gang powers is still in Parliament. TBC on whether that works.
Ministers are waiting for the French to stop dinghies leaving the shore and a separate German commitment to change its law so it can seize boats being warehoused there.
The final factor relies on global events. People will keep leaving their homes around the world to come to Europe if they feel unsafe.
All of these things need to keep going in the right direction for the government to meet its commitment to end hotel use by the end of the Parliament.
Egypt has unveiled parts of a sunken city submerged beneath waters off the coast of Alexandria, revealing buildings, artefacts and an ancient dock that date back more than 2,000 years.
Egyptian authorities said the site, located in the waters of Abu Qir Bay, may be an extension of the ancient city of Canopus, a prominent centre during the Ptolemaic dynasty, which ruled Egypt for nearly 300 years, and the Roman empire, which governed for about 600 years.
Over time, earthquakes and rising sea levels submerged the city and the nearby port of Heracleion.
Divers helped to retrieve statues from the depths of the sunken city and cranes hoisted the artefacts on to dry land. Photograph: Khaled Desouki/AFP/Getty Images
On Thursday, cranes slowly hoisted statues from the depths while divers in wetsuits, who had helped retrieve them, cheered from the shore.
Egypt’s tourism and antiquities minister, Sherif Fathi, said: “There’s a lot underwater, but what we’re able to bring up is limited, it’s only specific material according to strict criteria.
“The rest will remain part of our sunken heritage.”
The underwater ruins include limestone buildings that may have served as places of worship, residential spaces and commercial or industrial structures.
Reservoirs and rock-carved ponds for domestic water storage and fish cultivation were also uncovered.
Only specific material is allowed to be retrieved from the underwater city. The rest will remain submerged. Photograph: Amr Nabil/AP
Other notable finds include statues of royal figures and sphinxes from the pre-Roman era, including a partially preserved sphinx with the cartouche of Ramses II, one of the country’s most famous and longest-ruling ancient pharaohs.
Many of the statues are missing body parts, including a beheaded Ptolemaic figure made of granite, and the lower half of a Roman nobleman’s likeness carved from marble.
A merchant ship, stone anchors and a harbour crane dating back to the Ptolemaic and Roman eras were found at the site of a 125-metre dock, which the ministry said was used as a harbour for small boats until the Byzantine period.
Notable finds include statues of royal figures and sphinxes from the pre-Roman era. Photograph: Khaled Desouki/AFP/Getty Images
Alexandria is home to countless ancient ruins and historic treasures, but Egypt’s second city is at risk of succumbing to the same waters that claimed Canopus and Heracleion.
The coastal city is especially vulnerable to the climate crisis and rising sea levels, sinking by more than 3mm every year.
Even in the United Nations’ best-case scenario, a third of Alexandria will be underwater or uninhabitable by 2050.
Moscow threw Donald Trump’s Ukraine peace initiative into disarray on Thursday, insisting it must have a veto over any postwar support for the country as its forces carried out a large-scale overnight missile barrage.
In a series of hardline remarks, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said European proposals to deploy troops in Ukraine after a settlement would amount to “foreign intervention”, which he called absolutely unacceptable for Russia.
Lavrov said Russia wanted to return to discussing a framework first proposed during the initial peace talks held in Istanbul in 2022, under which Moscow and Beijing would help guarantee Ukraine’s security alongside European allies – terms Kyiv considers unacceptable.
“We support the principles and security guarantees that were agreed … in April 2022,” Lavrov said. “Anything else … is of course an absolutely futile undertaking.”
European leaders are exploring possible security guarantees for Ukraine after the war, building on Trump’s promise to back the country under any settlement with Russia. France, Britain and Estonia have indicated they could send troops to a postwar Ukraine, while several other nations said they might take part, though much depends on US involvement.
Lavrov’s comments cast doubt on the prospects for peace talks.
After the recent Trump-Putin summit in Alaska, US officials said the Russian president had accepted the prospect of western security guarantees for Ukraine.
But the latest statements suggest Moscow may be backing away from that understanding – or that Washington may have misinterpreted the Kremlin’s position from the outset.
Trump on Thursday appeared to vent his frustration at Russia’s obstruction. In a post on Truth Social, the US president blamed his predecessor, Joe Biden, for not allowing Ukraine to “fight back” against Russia.
“It is very hard, if not impossible, to win a war without attacking an invaders country. It’s like a great team in sports that has a fantastic defense, but is not allowed to play offense. There is no chance of winning! It is like that with Ukraine and Russia. Crooked and grossly incompetent Joe Biden would not let Ukraine FIGHT BACK, only DEFEND. How did that work out? … Interesting times ahead!!!” Trump wrote.
Trump’s veiled threats against Russia will be welcomed in Kyiv and European capitals, though the US leader has previously backed away from imposing sanctions or boosting support for Ukraine.
Lavrov also poured cold water on the prospect of a summit between the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, which has been touted by Trump. Lavrov said a bilateral meeting at the highest level would be possible only “if all issues requiring discussion are thoroughly prepared”.
He suggested that Putin would meet Zelenskyy only to accept Russia’s maximalist conditions, which would entail Ukraine’s capitulation.
Russia’s veteran foreign minister further questioned whether Zelenskyy had the legitimacy to sign any future peace accord, parroting a familiar Kremlin line that portrays Ukraine’s leadership as illegitimate.
Despite a flurry of diplomacy in recent days between Trump and his Russian and Ukrainian counterparts, the path to peace remains uncertain as Moscow has shown little willingness to climb down from its maximalist demands.
Ukraine map
Even so, the White House on Wednesday continued to strike a positive tone.
“President Trump and his national security team continue to engage with Russian and Ukrainian officials towards a bilateral meeting to stop the killing and end the war,” a White House spokesperson told Fox News.
Speaking to foreign correspondents in Kyiv, Zelenskyy, who has agreed to meet Putin, said he would like a “strong reaction” from Washington if the Russian leader was not willing to sit down for a bilateral meeting with him soon.
“I responded immediately to the proposal for a bilateral meeting: we are ready. But what if the Russians are not ready?” Zelenskyy said in comments released on Thursday from a briefing with reporters in Kyiv a day earlier.
As uncertainty over peace talks persisted, Russia launched one of its heaviest bombardments in weeks.
The Ukrainian military said Moscow had fired 574 drones and 40 missiles in a major aerial assault that struck western regions, killing at least one person and injuring 15. Ukraine’s foreign minister said a major US electronics manufacturer was among the targets.
“The message is clear: Russia is not looking for peace. Russia is attacking American business in Ukraine, humiliating American business,” said Andy Hunder, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine.
Ukraine, for its part, has stepped up drone attacks on Russian infrastructure supporting the war, with strikes on oil refineries pushing wholesale gasoline prices in Russia to record highs.
At the heart of all this are many human storiespublished at 15:03 British Summer Time
15:03 BST
Tom Joyner Live reporter
Among the backlog of asylum claims waiting to be processed is Daastan’s.
The 26-year-old fled Afghanistan two years ago, fearing for his life after his father and brother were targeted by the Taliban.
After arriving in the UK, he applied for asylum and the Home Office found him a hotel room in Yorkshire, where he’s been ever since.
Every day, Daastan is given three meals and is allowed to leave for a walk if he signs out with a guard. Other than that, he says he spends most of his time in silence – his only roommate doesn’t speak English.
He told me it often feels like he is floating in a hopeless limbo: “You escape one problem and now you’re in another problem,” he explains, referring to his escape from the Taliban.
The nightly news coverage of protests against asylum seekers has only made things worse. One day, through his window, he watched as guards and police surrounded the hotel and stopped protestors from getting any closer to him.
“All we asylum seekers wanted was a shelter so the government put us in a hotel. That wasn’t our choice,” he says. “We haven’t done anything!”
Daastan’s mental health has taken a heavy toll, and he now takes antidepressants.
Around a year after he arrived in the UK, Daastan found out that his claim had been denied. With the help of a solicitor, he lodged an appeal, and is now awaiting news of the outcome.
Last year, he joined a local cricket team near his hotel, eager to play the game he loved back home in Afghanistan. But one day, his teammate made a comment about Daastan’s status as an asylum seeker.
“They didn’t know I understand English and they were talking about me using a lot of bad words. They gave me lots of depression,” he says.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Thursday that he wants more clarity on potential Western security guarantees before agreeing to sit down for a face-to-face meeting with Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
“We want to have an understanding of the security guarantees architecture within seven to 10 days,” Zelensky said in comments to reporters. “We need to understand which country will be ready to do what at each specific moment.”
Britain and France are leading efforts to form a military coalition to back the guarantees, whatever they end up being. Once an outline is agreed, Zelensky said U.S. President Donald Trump would like to see a bilateral meeting between him and Putin, but only in a “neutral” European country.
“Switzerland, Austria, we agree… For us, Turkey is a NATO country and part of Europe. And we are not opposed,” he said of possible locations for that summit.
Zelensky previously said that the only way to end the war is through a three-way meeting with Trump and Putin. On Monday, Trump announced that plans are apparently underway for a summit between Putin and Zelensky, after which a trilateral session including himself could take place.
Russia has yet to confirm those plans. And in recent days, officials in Moscow have issued vaguely worded statements that suggest they are simply open to the idea in principle but not ready to make solid commitments anytime soon.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov claimed this week that Putin has always been open to meeting with Zelensky in person, even though the Russian leader rejected such an offer in May, while also earlier questioning his Ukrainian counterpart’s legitimacy as president.
On Thursday, Lavrov accused Ukraine of seeking “unrealistic” guarantees that were incompatible with Russia’s demands, saying that any deployment of European troops in Ukraine as part of a peace plan would be “absolutely unacceptable.”
The minister has demanded that Russia have an effective veto in security guarantees for Ukraine. He said that any discussions on the matter that do not include Moscow would be “a road to nowhere” and fail to address what it refers to as the “root causes” of the war.
Meanwhile, U.S. officials told The Guardian on Thursday that Trump plans to take a step back from peace talks for now as he waits for Ukrainian and Russian officials to organize a meeting between their two leaders.
“I just want to see what happens at the meeting. So they’re in the process of setting it up and we’re going to see what happens,” Trump told talk show host Mark Levin on WABC earlier this week.
Despite Trump’s flurry of diplomacy in recent weeks, including a summit with Putin in Alaska and a White House meeting with Zelensky and European leaders, little tangible progress in peace negotiations has emerged, and both Russia and Ukraine appear dug into their earlier positions.
BEIJING — With leader Xi Jinping looking on, China marked 60 years of Communist Party rule in Tibet on Thursday with speeches and a parade in front of the 17th-century Potala Palace, the home of the Dalai Lama until he fled to India in 1959.
Speakers hailed economic development in the remote region in the foothills of the Himalayas and stressed the need to fight separatism. Opposition to Chinese rule has been largely quashed by a decades-long campaign of repression that has imprisoned Buddhist monks and demolished some monasteries.
“Tibetan affairs are China’s internal affairs, and no external forces are permitted to interfere. All schemes to split the motherland and undermine stability in Tibet are doomed to fail,” senior Communist Party leader Wang Huning told a crowd of 20,000 flag-waving people in a large public square.
Communist forces occupied Tibet in 1951, two years after emerging victorious in a civil war and taking control of China. The anniversary marked the government’s establishment of the Tibet autonomous region in 1965. It is called Xizang in Chinese.
The parade, along a wide avenue between the square and a covered stage for special guests, included floats highlighting the regions of Tibet and large dance troupes that stopped in front of the square to perform. Troops and police marched in formation, shouting out their mottos. Others held up wide banners that proclaimed Communist Party slogans.
“The great achievements of the Tibet autonomous region over the past 60 years fully demonstrate that only under the leadership of the Communist Party of China … can Tibet achieve prosperity and progress, create a bright future, and enable people of all ethnic groups in Tibet to live a happy and healthy new life,” Wang told the gathering.
The 13-story Potala Palace, now a tourist site, provided an impressive backdrop from its perch atop a rocky outcropping in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet.
The Dalai Lama, who recently turned 90, still lives in India and is the spiritual leader of Tibet. China considers him a threat and says it has the right to appoint his reincarnation after his death. Many overseas Tibetans are critical of Chinese rule and a government-in-exile has been set up in the mountainous Indian town of Dharamshala.
An Israeli operation to conquer Gaza City would be a “death sentence” for the remaining living Israeli hostages held in Gaza, relatives of the hostages have said, as the Red Cross and UN warned of a looming catastrophe.
Opposition to a new operation – repeatedly “approved” by Israeli figures in recent days – is growing inside Israel and internationally. Calling for an immediate ceasefire, the UN secretary general, António Guterres, warned of the “massive death and destruction that a military operation against Gaza would inevitably cause”.
Christian Cardon, the chief spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), said: “The intensification of hostilities in Gaza means more killing, more displacement, more destruction and more panic. Gaza is a closed space, from which nobody can escape … and where access to health care, food and safe water is dwindling. Meanwhile, the security of humanitarians is getting worse by the hour. This is intolerable.”
On Thursday, the IDF said medical officials and aid groups in the northern part of the territory had been told “to prepare for the population’s movement to the southern Gaza Strip”.
Aid organisations say Israel has made negligible efforts to significantly increase humanitarian assistance to Gaza to the levels needed by the population, prompting a warning from the French president, Emmanuel Macron, of the danger of a “true disaster”.
The families of Israeli hostages held a press conference to call for Israel to agree to a ceasefire deal – already accepted by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad – which would result in half of the remaining 20 surviving hostages being released.
“We’re a step away from a total torpedoing” of a deal, said Lishay Miran Lavi, whose husband, Omri, is thought to still be alive in captivity. “There is an agreement on the table that could save the lives of hostages and return the dead for proper burial.
“Hamas has agreed, but the prime minister’s office is working to sabotage it, which would sentence the living hostages to death and the dead to disappearance … The public demands the return of the hostages and an end to the war, which has lost all sense. You cannot conduct a 22-month war whose sole purpose is to preserve political power.”
Representatives from hostage families referred sceptically to the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s repeated promises that Israel is close to victory.
Palestinians have already begun to head south amid Israel’s warnings of further military action in Gaza City. Photograph: Dawoud Abu Alkas/Reuters
Israel’s increasing defiance of international opinion has pushed it ever closer to the status of a pariah state, both for the destruction and mass starvation it has visited on Gaza in almost two years of war, and for its approval on Wednesday of a massive illegal settlement aimed at destroying any possibility of a future Palestinian state. The approval was described by the British foreign secretary, David Lammy, as a “flagrant breach” of international law.
Netanyahu’s plans for a major new offensive have prompted large-scale demonstrations in Israel. About 400,000 joined a protest on Sunday and more demonstrations are planned for this weekend.
A weakened Netanyahu appears to have bent to the demands of far-right minority parties in his fragile coalition who have called for the conquest of Gaza and threatened to collapse the government in the event of a ceasefire deal.
The Israeli military bombarded Gaza City overnight, a day after it was announced that 60,000 reservists were being called up. A military official said most reservists would not serve in combat, giving strength to the argument that at least some of Israel’s recent statements amount to posturing against the background of complex and continuing ceasefire talks.
Calling up tens of thousands of reservists is likely to take weeks, giving time for mediators to attempt to bridge gaps over a new temporary ceasefire proposal that Hamas has accepted, but the Israeli government is yet to officially respond to.
That proposal, which aligns with an outline drawn up by the US president Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, calls for a 60-day ceasefire and the release of 10 living hostages being held in Gaza by Hamas militants and of 18 bodies. In turn, Israel would release about 200 long-serving Palestinian prisoners.
Significantly, Israel had signalled weeks ago that it accepted that outline for a deal, with the distance between Hamas and Israel’s negotiators only closing since.
Netanyahu is scheduled to meet some cabinet ministers on Thursday to discuss his plan to seize Gaza City, according to Haaretz and other Israeli media outlets, without giving more details.
The plan was approved this month by the security cabinet, which he chairs, even though many of Israel’s closest allies have urged the government to reconsider.
In Gaza City, thousands of Palestinians have left their homes as Israeli forces have escalated shelling on the Sabra and Tuffah neighbourhoods. Some families have left for shelters along the coast, while others have moved to central and southern parts of the territory, according to local people there.
“We are facing a bitter-bitter situation, to die at home or leave and die somewhere else: as long as this war continues, survival is uncertain,” said Rabah Abu Elias, 67, a father of seven.
“In the news, they speak about a possible truce; on the ground, we only hear explosions and see deaths. To leave Gaza City or not isn’t an easy decision to make,” he told Reuters by phone.
NurPhoto via Getty Images
