More than 32,000 asylum seekers were being housed in hotels in Britain at the end of Labour's first year in Government, new figures have revealed.
The number of migrants in the temporary accommodation while they wait for their claims to stay in the UK to be assessed was up 8% on the same point 12 months ago, Home Office data published on Thursday shows.
Meanwhile Government spending on asylum in the UK stood at £4.76 billion in 2024/25. This was down 12% from the record £5.38 billion spent in 2023/24, according to the Home Office.
The figures come just days after a court ruled that more than 100 asylum seekers currently staying at a hotel in Essex should be removed from the accommodation after a council brought a legal case.
The High Court judgment has left ministers bracing for further legal challenges from local authorities across the country and pressure on the Government as to where else they can house asylum seekers.
The latest Home Office data, published as part of the usual quarterly immigration statistics, cover Labour's first year in office.
It shows there were 32,059 asylum seekers in UK hotels by the end of June. This was up from 29,585 at the same point a year earlier, when the Conservatives were still in power but down slightly on the 32,345 figure at the end of March.
The latest number is still below the peak of 56,042 asylum seekers in hotels at the end of September 2023 under the Tories.
Figures for hotels published by the Home Office on Thursday date back to December 2022.
Asylum seekers and their families can be housed in temporary accommodation, known as contingency accommodation, if they are awaiting assessment of their claim or have had a claim approved and there is not enough longer-term accommodation available.
When there is not enough, the Home Office - which has a legal obligation to provide housing to asylum seekers who would otherwise be destitute - can move people to alternatives such as hotels and large sites, like former military bases.
Labour has pledged to end the use of hotels to house asylum seekers by the end of this parliament - which would be 2029, if not earlier.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said the Government's action to tackle the number people coming to the UK had been important steps to "restoring order".
She said: "We inherited a broken immigration and asylum system that the previous government left in chaos. 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 action we have taken in the last 12 months - increasing returns of failed asylum seekers by over 30%, cutting asylum costs by 11%, reducing the backlog by 18% and our forthcoming plans to overhaul the failing asylum appeal system - are crucial steps to restoring order and putting an end to the chaotic use of asylum hotels that we inherited from the previous government.
"At the same time, we are bringing legal migration back under control, with a 48% reduction in work visas this year - and further stronger visa controls and higher skill requirements introduced through our White Paper expected to bring those overall numbers down further.
"As we roll out further reforms, including the new pilot with France, new counter terror powers to strengthen border security and new asylum reforms later this year, we will continue to take the serious steps required to restore order, control and fairness to the system, and to continue building the foundations of a new and stronger approach."
But shadow home secretary Chris Philp accused Labour of having "lost control of Britain's borders", claiming "hotels would already be gone" if the Conservatives were still in power.
He said: "Numbers in asylum hotels are back up to 32,059, higher than at the time of the election. Compare that to the nine months before the election, when the Conservatives cut numbers in hotels by 47% and shut almost 200 sites. At our pace of closure, the hotels would already be gone, but numbers in hotels have gone up under Labour."
Campaigners including Rape Crisis and Refuge have warned conversations about violence against women and girls are being "hijacked by an anti-migrant agenda" which they argued fuels divisions and harms survivors.
More than 100 women's organisations have written to ministers to say they "have been alarmed in recent weeks by an increase in unfounded claims made by people in power, and repeated in the media, that hold particular groups as primarily responsible for sexual violence".
They added: "This not only undermines genuine concerns about women's safety, but also reinforces the damaging myth that the greatest risk of gender-based violence comes from strangers."
