There's been a lot of focus this week on
asylum hotels and boat crossings, and
we'll come to that. But it's probably
worth looking first at the overall
migration figures that include regular
legal migration, too. And you can see
it's coming down 30% fall in 2025 in
these figures compared to the 12 months
previous. Down from the peak in 2023,
but still a fair bit higher than 2019
and the pre-rexit years. Now, what's
driving that? Well, it's predominantly a
drop in the number of work visas being
given out. That's this bar here, the
dark bar. You can see the big section in
2024. It's come down substantially in
this set. That in turn is being driven
by far fewer health and care visas being
given out. For care workers alone, the
drop is almost 90%. Now, a large part of
that is because of reforms put through
by the previous Conservative government,
but Labor has also been putting measures
through uh and those should bring down
the overall broader numbers eventually.
If you look at the bottom though, the
bright blue bar down here, that is small
boat crossings and you can see it makes
up a relatively tiny percentage of the
overall migration figure. They're
politically important though and this
data shows that they have gone up 38%
compared to the year before close to the
peak in June 2023.
Now that in turn has driven up asylum
applications. That's the green line
here. They are up to a record high. You
can see the black line is decisions,
initial decisions made by the home
office. They're doing pretty well. It's
higher than it has been, but because of
the backlog of applications and more
people appealing when they're rejected,
that all pushes up the number of people
that need to be housed. And that is what
has been causing issues with
accommodation. Until 2023, you can see
here, most people, the green block, were
in regular residential accommodation.
That's where asylum seekers were
generally going. But then you had small
boat crossings picking up, asylum claims
picking up, and hotels started to be
used, and they are far more expensive.
And we now know that 12 months after
Labour took office in June this year,
just over 32,000 people were in hotels.
Slightly down on where it was three
months before, substantially down on the
peak in 2023, but crucially 8% higher on
one year before when the Tories left
office. Now, if we look at how that
breaks down regionally, where some of
the people are going, if we look at
Eping in Essex, where there was that
hotel that was at the center of the
court ruling this week, you can see in
March this year, 55 asylum seekers with
half of them in hotels. Fast forward
three months to June though, and that
number has gone up four-fold with 90%
now in hotels. We go to another area
where there has been anger over hotels.
Tamworth in Staffordshire, 183 asylum
seekers in March this year, almost all
in hotels. Fast forward again for 3
months to June and you can see the
figure has gone up 266. Again, almost
all of them in hotels. Now, there are
plenty more places like this across the
country. And I think what's alarming for
the government is that many of those
areas are also battlegrounds in the
Midlands and the North where reform is
campaigning hard. So, this data shows
Labour hasn't got on top of the crisis
in the asylum system yet, but it also
suggests that if it can't, there could
be dire consequences come the election.