Asylum bleaker
Labour pledges , Issue 1663

NONE of home secretary Shabana Mahmood's draconian plans for asylum seekers – including making them (and potentially their UK-born children) liable to deportation for 20 years – appears in Labour's 2024 manifesto.

But what is in the manifesto – a promise to organise and fund an end to the backlog of asylum seekers held in hotels – has not been met.

Into reverse
Labour promised to "hire additional caseworkers to clear the Conservatives' backlog and end asylum hotels, saving the taxpayer billions of pounds". However, Home Office statistics show it has done the opposite.

The latest figures, for June 2025, show 2,057 asylum caseworkers – 407 fewer than in June 2024, the last figure under the Conservatives. That's a 16.5 percent fall from the days of James Cleverly.

Labour said its new caseworkers would end the Conservatives' "perma-backlog" which kept "tens of thousands" of asylum seekers "indefinitely staying in hotels costing the taxpayer millions of pounds every week".

Increased caseworker salaries would easily be covered by a cut in the huge hotel bills from contractors Serco, Mears and Clearsprings.

Labour's reasons for abandoning its pledge in favour of Mahmood's harsh plans are unclear. The chancellor's parsimony may have something to do with it. But clearing backlogs would empty hotels, and as most asylum seekers win their cases, that would increase the numbers granted leave to remain, which may be anathema to the increasingly Reform-aping Labour.

So, rather than fulfilling a manifesto pledge, Mahmood is looking for military camps to house asylum seekers while announcing more restrictive policies for the future.

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REVOLVING DOORS
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