Number of cases in asylum backlog down 22%, says Home Office, but at 97,000 still higher than before 2022
The Home Office has also published a raft of immigration and asylum figures this morning. There is a summary of the figures here, but you can find all the sets of data here.
The Home Office says the number of cases in the asylum backlog (applications waiting to be processed) is down by 22%. It says:
At the end of September 2024, there were 22% fewer asylum cases awaiting an initial decision (97,170 cases, relating to 133,408 people) than at the end of September 2023
While the number of cases awaiting an initial decision is lower than the peak at the end of June 2023 (134,046 cases), it is higher than before 2022.
Key events
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Reform UK says it now has more than 100,000 members
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Labour says today’s figures show net migration quadrupled in 4 years under Tories
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Number of cases in asylum backlog down 22%, says Home Office, but at 97,000 still higher than before 2022
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Net migration in year ending June 2023 hit record high of 906,000, says ONS, as it revises up past figures
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ONS revises up its estimate for net migration in year ending June 2023 by 166,000
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Net migration down 20% in year ending June 2024, but still 728,000, ONS says
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Use robots instead of hiring low-paid migrants, says shadow home secretary Chris Philp
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David Cameron supports assisted dying bill due to ‘extremely strong’ safeguards
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Tories say a drop in net migration figures would be due to their visa changes
Zia Yusuf, the Reform UK chair, has the party now has 400 branches across the country.
The party is copying the Lib Dems, he says – not in terms of policy, but in terms of organisation. He says the Lib Dems have shown the importance of having a political presence in local areas.
Reform UK says it now has more than 100,000 members
At the Reform UK press conference Zia Yusuf, the party chair, is speaking.
He says a year ago the party had 15,000 members, and was polling at 8%.
Now it has more than 100,00 members, he says, and is polling at 20%.
The Conservative party has 131,680 members, according to the figures it released at the time of the leadership contest.
Reform UK is about to hold a press conference.
There is a live feed here.
Labour says today’s figures show net migration quadrupled in 4 years under Tories
I’m Andrew Sparrow, picking up the blog again from colleagues.
The Labour party has put out this statement about today’s immigration figures. It’s from a party spokesperson.
In their own words, the Tories broke the immigration system. On their watch, net migration quadrupled in four years to a record high of nearly one million, despite saying they’d lower it to 100,000. They are an open borders party who lied time and again to the public. This is the chaos Labour inherited and any crowing from the Tories should be seen in that light.
Over the summer, the government started the hard graft. We hired more caseworkers to tackle the asylum backlog and we’re now interviewing 10,000 people per month, compared to 2,000 under the Tories, so we can get people out of asylum hotels and save the taxpayers billions. We’ve also ramped up the removal of those with no right to be in the UK by a fifth. Without this action, thousands more would remain in the UK illegally.
Labour is getting on with cleaning up the Conservatives’ mess. Our new Border Security Command is working with our European partners to smash the criminal gang networks driving small boat crossings.
The UK’s asylum system now costs £5bn – the highest level of spending on record and up by more than a third in a year.
Home Office spending on asylum rose by £1.43bn, up 36% from £3.95bn in 2022/23 to £5.38bn in 2023/24, PA news agency analysis of figures published on Thursday showed.
The latest figure is now the highest total 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 (£0.45bn).
The total covers all Home Office asylum costs, including direct cash support and accommodation, plus wider staffing and other related migration and border activity.
The figure does not include the cost of operations responding to Channel crossings, intercepting people as they make the journey to the UK. Although the majority of people entering the UK in this manner do then end up in the asylum system, data suggests.
Andrew Sparrow
The Conservative former home secretaries Suella Braverman and James Cleverly are claiming credit for net migration starting to fall.
Braverman posted this on social media.
A 20% drop in immigration since June 2023 is a result of the changes I fought for and introduced in May 2023 as Home Secretary.
That’s when we started to turn the tide.
But 1.2 million arrivals a year is still too high.
This is unsustainable and why we need radical change.
And Cleverly posted this.
Today’s migration figures are the first to show the impact of the changes that I brought in as Home Secretary.
Numbers are still too high, but we see the first significant downward trend in years. Changes that Labour opposed and haven’t fully implemented. pic.twitter.com/qG03N34zWg
— James Cleverly🇬🇧 (@JamesCleverly) November 28, 2024
Today’s migration figures are the first to show the impact of the changes that I brought in as Home Secretary.
Numbers are still too high, but we see the first significant downward trend in years. Changes that Labour opposed and haven’t fully implemented.
I am handing over the blog to colleagues now. I will be back later this morning.
Today’s Home Office figures show that the cost of government spending on asylum was £5.38bn in 2023-24, up 36% from £3.95bn in 2022-23, PA Media says.
Sunder Katwala, director of British Future, a thinktank focusing on migration, race and identity issues, says today’s figures should remind Keir Starmer of the danger of making promises he can’t keep. Katwala says:
These are the final scores of the last government, after more than a decade of making promises they could not keep on immigration. The collapse in public trust was one reason for their defeat in July. If Keir Starmer learns one lesson on immigration from his predecessors, it should be not to make promises you can’t keep.
Starmer will oversee a continuing fall from the record levels of net migration but his challenge now is to manage the trade-offs on migration for the economy, NHS, universities and social care.
It remains to be seen how much the public will notice a fall in visa numbers if there is no progress on controlling the much more visible Channel crossings.
Number of cases in asylum backlog down 22%, says Home Office, but at 97,000 still higher than before 2022
The Home Office has also published a raft of immigration and asylum figures this morning. There is a summary of the figures here, but you can find all the sets of data here.
The Home Office says the number of cases in the asylum backlog (applications waiting to be processed) is down by 22%. It says:
At the end of September 2024, there were 22% fewer asylum cases awaiting an initial decision (97,170 cases, relating to 133,408 people) than at the end of September 2023
While the number of cases awaiting an initial decision is lower than the peak at the end of June 2023 (134,046 cases), it is higher than before 2022.
This chart from the ONS report shows the impact of the changes to the visa rules announced at the end of last year on net migration numbers. Most foreign students were stopped from bringing dependants with them. And the rules for work visas were tightened too, with social care workers no longer allowed to bring dependants with them.
This is from Mary Gregory, director of population statistics at the Office for National Statistics, on today’s figures.
Since 2021, long-term international migration to the UK has been at unprecedented levels.
This has been driven by a variety of factors, including the war in Ukraine and the effects of the post-Brexit immigration system. Pent-up demand for study-related immigration because of travel restrictions during the coronavirus pandemic also had an impact.
While remaining high by historic standards, net migration is now beginning to fall and is provisionally down 20% in the 12 months to June 2024.
Over that period we have seen a fall in immigration, driven by declining numbers of dependants on study visas coming from outside the EU.
Over the first six months of 2024, we are also seeing decreases in the number of people arriving for work-related reasons. This is partly related to policy changes earlier this year and is consistent with visa data published by Home Office.
We are also starting to see increases in emigration, most notably for those who came to the UK on study-related visas. This is likely to be a consequence of the higher numbers of students coming to the UK post-pandemic who are now reaching the end of their courses.
