The government says 16,400 failed asylum seekers have been returned since the election.
We can’t find an example of the government saying this exactly, and that’s not what official figures show. The 16,400 figure refers to all immigration returns carried out during Labour’s first six months in office. We don’t know how many of these involved asylum seekers, though previous data suggests it may be a minority.
“Record numbers” of people have been returned in the last six months.
This does not appear to be correct. The number of returns in the last six months is the highest for several years, but the number of returns prior to 2017 was consistently higher.
Last week the Home Office published new data showing that 16,400 returns of people without the right to be in the UK had been carried out during the government’s first six months in office.
Some media coverage of this figure has appeared to suggest it represents the number of asylum seekers who have been returned.
The Daily Express reported that “the Prime Minister said the number of failed asylum seekers being sent home has increased to 16,400 since his party won power”, while a Guardian headline claimed “Home Office says record number of refused asylum seekers deported since July”—though the article went on to say the Home Office had described those returned as “immigration offenders and foreign criminals”. (A Home Office press release about the figure did use those terms, while its headline referred to returns of “illegal migrants”.)
The 16,400 figure refers to the total number of enforced and voluntary returns of people without the right to be in the UK between 5 July 2024 and 4 January 2025. But published figures don’t tell us that all those returned were asylum seekers. In fact, we don’t know how many of the 16,400 were asylum seekers, though previous data suggests it may be a minority.
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Both the Daily Express and the Guardian quoted Mr Starmer as telling the BBC: “For the individuals that are being smuggled, the disincentive is you’re wasting your money and if you get to the UK, you’re going to be returned to where you came from.
“I’m really pleased that the figures for the last six months show record numbers of people being returned, people who should not be in the UK—16,400”.
We can’t say for sure whether Mr Starmer has directly claimed elsewhere that the new figures referred to the return of “asylum seekers”, but we’ve not found any evidence that he did. In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Mr Starmer said the number referred to “people with no right to be here”.
The Home Office meanwhile stated in its press release that the government had returned the “highest number of illegal migrants in 5 years”, but did not say that all of these returns involved asylum seekers.
We’ve asked the Daily Express and the Guardian if they’re able to point us to where the government said the 16,400 figure referred to “asylum seekers” specifically, but haven’t had a response from either.
It’s worth noting that while the Home Office correctly stated the number of returns was the highest in a six-month period in five years, it does not appear to represent a “record”, as Mr Starmer suggested. Official statistics show that between 2007 and 2017 the total number of enforced and voluntary returns over a six-month period were consistently higher than the figure published by the government last week. We’ve asked Downing Street about this but not had a response.
Broadly speaking, immigration ‘returns’ involve the removal of people who are in the UK without a legal right to be here, usually to their country of origin. Some of these returns are voluntary, meaning that a person leaves the UK of their own accord (either with or without notifying the Home Office). Others are enforced, meaning their departure is carried out by the Home Office.
Over the past few months the government has begun publishing ad-hoc data on the number of immigration returns carried out since Labour took office. The first of these data releases was published after Full Fact called on the Home Office to do so, following the Prime Minister’s use of then-unpublished returns data.
The latest release shows that of the 16,400 returns carried out between 5 July 2024 and 4 January 2025, 4,390 were enforced returns, meaning the majority (12,010) were people who left the UK of their own accord.
The figures show that of the total returns 2,580 involved foreign national offenders, but don’t clarify how many of these were enforced returns. The release also doesn’t confirm how many of the 16,400 returns involved asylum seekers, or people who arrived in the country illegally (for example, by crossing the Channel in small boats). We’ve asked the Home Office if it can provide this information but haven’t had a response.
However, while we can’t say how many of the returns in the last six months were asylum seekers, previous official immigration data suggests that the majority of returns tend not to involve asylum seekers or people who arrived via small boat crossing.
In the year to September 2024 just over a quarter (26%) of all returns, and a third of enforced returns (33%), involved asylum seekers. This data only covers some of Labour’s time in office however, and most of the period covered was prior to the election.
Other figures show that in the third quarter of 2024 (broadly covering Labour’s first three months in government), approximately 6% of all returns involved small boat arrivals (down from about 8% the previous quarter).
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