By Sam Tabahriti and Michael Holden
LONDON (Reuters) -British Prime Minister Keir Starmer faced renewed criticism over his immigration policies on Thursday after new official figures showed asylum-seeker claims hitting a record high, with more migrants being housed in hotels compared with a year ago.
According to a regular tracker of voters’ concerns, immigration has overtaken the economy as the biggest issue amid anger over the record numbers of asylum seekers arriving in small boats across the Channel, including more than 27,000 this year.
The populist Reform Party, which advocates the deportation of “illegal immigrants”, is now comfortably leading in the polls, putting Starmer, who has promised to cut net immigration, under increasing pressure to tackle the issue.
However, earlier this week the government was dealt a blow when a council to the northeast of London won a temporary injunction to stop asylum seekers from being housed in a hotel where protests had erupted after one resident was charged with sexual assault.
Other councils have indicated they would also seek similar court orders, while Reform leader Nigel Farage has called for more protests.
“Labour has lost control of our borders and they’re engulfed in a migration crisis,” said Chris Philp, the home affairs spokesman for the main opposition Conservative Party.
The new migration data showed more than 32,000 asylum seekers were housed in hotels in Britain at the end of June this year, an increase of 8% from the year before.
However, the total figure of just over 32,000 was 43% lower than the peak of 56,042 recorded in September 2023, and slightly down compared with the previous quarterly figures in March.
The figures also showed 111,000 people had claimed asylum in the year to June, up 14% from the previous year and surpassing the previous peak of 103,000 recorded in 2002.
Home Secretary (interior minister) Yvette Cooper said overall the figures showed their policies have been working since Labour took office last year, pointing to a 30% increase in the returns of failed asylum seekers.
“We inherited a broken immigration and asylum system that the previous government left in chaos,” she said in a statement.
“Since coming to office we have strengthened Britain’s visa and immigration controls, cut asylum costs and sharply increased enforcement and returns, as today’s figures show.”
The numbers arriving on small boats – up 38% in the year to June – have become the focal point for the migration issue. Critics say the public are at risk from thousands of young men coming to Britain, while pro-migrant groups say the issue is being used by far right groups to exploit tensions.
The latest figures showed of the almost 160,000 people who had arrived on small boats and claimed asylum since 2018, 61,706 had been granted some form of protection status.
Nationals from Afghanistan, Eritrea and Iran made up the largest number of such arrivals in the year to June.
While the data showed overall enforced returns were 25% higher in the year to June than the previous year, it also said since 2018 only 6,313 people who arrived by small boat had been returned, 4% of the total number of such arrivals.
(Additional reporting by Catarina Demony; Editing by Helen Popper and Hugh Lawson)
