Ministers repeat misleading and unevidenced claims on immigration

On BBC Question Time last Thursday (23 October) care minister Stephen Kinnock MP claimed “since we came into power, we have deported 35,000 people from this country”.

That’s not quite right. It’s true there were 35,052 immigration returns during Labour’s first year in government—but not all immigration returns meet the official definition of a ‘deportation’.

The majority of the 35,052 returns were voluntary returns. Enforced returns—the category which includes deportations—accounted for a minority (9,115 or 26%) of the total returns that took place between 5 July 2024 and 4 July 2025, according to ad hoc data published by the government in July.

We don’t know how many of the enforced returns were classified as deportations—we’ve asked the government about this several times but have not received a response.

A similar claim was also made by housing secretary Steve Reed MP on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme yesterday. He said: “35,000 people who have no right to be in the country have been deported, that’s a record.”

As we’ve previously explained, based on official government data neither the overall number of immigration returns nor the number of enforced returns carried out during Labour’s first year in office is a record for a 12-month period.

And on Question Time last week, Mr Kinnock also claimed: “We have cut the number of asylum hotels from 400 to 200.”

While it’s true that the number of hotels being used to house asylum seekers fell from over 400 at its peak in the summer of 2023 to 210 as of July this year, almost all of this decrease took place while the Conservatives were still in government.

In its first year in office Labour reduced the number of hotels by a net of three, from 213 in July 2024 to 210 in July 2025.

We’ve written about similar claims from government ministers several times previously. We’ve contacted Mr Kinnock and Mr Reed to ask them to correct the record, and will update this blog post if we receive a reply.