A total of 67,547 asylum applications were awaiting a decision at the end of September – up 41 per cent year-on-year and the highest since current records began in June 2010.
Separate Home Office figures show the overall number of cases in the asylum system – including cases awaiting the outcome of appeals and failed asylum seekers due to be removed from the UK – stood at 125,316 at the end of June 2021, up 14 per cent year-on-year and more than three times the number a decade earlier (37,903 in June 2011).
More than 25,700 people have made the dangerous journey across the English Channel to the UK in small boats this year – three times the total for the whole of 2020, according to data compiled by the PA news agency.
Last week, one of the Government’s immigration ministers told MPs that migrants boarding small boats to get to the UK is becoming the “route of choice for facilitations by evil criminal gangs”.
