Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government what proportion of migrants arriving in the UK in the past five years have tried to seek asylum.

The Home Office publishes data on asylum on gov.uk as part of the ‘Immigration System Statistics Quarterly Release’. Data on the number of people claiming asylum is published in table Asy_D01 of the Asylum detailed datasets. In the five years up to the end of March 2024, 333,282 people claimed asylum (including main applicants and dependants). Individuals must be in the country to apply for asylum; some will apply immediately upon arrival, but others may be in the country for a period of time before applying.

It is not possible to estimate precisely what proportion of migrants claim asylum in the UK. However, ONS estimate that in the last 5 years, 4.82 million people immigrated to the UK for 12 months or more. This includes EU, non-EU and British nationals. It will not include people who arrive irregularly and do not claim asylum, nor short-term migrants (i.e. those coming to the UK for less than 12 months).