Politics latest: Minister touts number of small boat crossings stopped | Politics News

Sir Keir Starmer entered Downing Street promising to “smash the gangs” to stop small boat crossings, and dramatically reduce the asylum backlog.

After a year in office, our senior data journalist Daniel Dunford has taken a look at the numbers to see how he is doing so far.

Small boats

More than 21,000 people (21,117 up to and including 7 July) have crossed the Channel so far this year.

The total that crossed in the first half of the year, up to the end of June, was 48% higher than the first half of any previous year.

The government say that still and dry weather has led to more crossings this year, but we’ve found that more migrants are also able to make the crossing on bad weather days than used to be able to. 

Partly, that’s because the boats they’re using are getting bigger. The number of migrants per boat has quadrupled since 2020, from 14 to 56.

Asylum hotels

The number of asylum seekers in hotels decreased from over 38,000 at the end of 2024 to 32,345 by the end of March.

But it was 30,000 when Labour took office, so it’s still higher than it was then.

Asylum claims 

The year to March 2025 saw a record 109,000 asylum claims, up 17% compared with the year before. 

Despite the higher number of claims, there have been a fewer number of initial decisions on claims. There were 94,000, down 11% from the previous year. 

There were more claims refused than granted, though – a reversal of the previous two years, when a majority of claims were granted. 

Migration

Net migration continues to fall rapidly, halving from 860,000 to 431,000 between December 2023 and December 2024.

The falls were because of a decline in the number of work and student visas granted, as well as their dependents. There was a slight rise in the number of people who were granted asylum.