The Home Office has admitted it is “unable to prove it can manage asylum accommodation effectively”, as a damning new report found control was “all but lost”.
Parliament’s spending watchdog has delivered a scathing “end-to-end snapshot” of Shabana Mahmood’s Home Office, warning mistakes made by civil servants are doomed to be repeated.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, said: “At the time of our inquiry, control of it had been all but lost. The focus on short-term, reactive ‘fixes’ has left the Government chasing after pressures pushed from one part of the system to the next.”
He slammed the lack of a “clear strategy uniting efforts”, adding communication between departments and local authorities is “patchy at best”.
“Given senior officials’ inability to articulate what the asylum system is collectively trying to achieve, it is no wonder such a directionless bureaucracy ends with people at the heart of it either left in limbo, or lost entirely,” Sir Geoffrey blasted.
The Home Office revealed to the PAC it only knows the location of the “vast majority” of failed asylum seekers.
The PAC revealed, of 5,000 who claimed asylum in January 2023, 41 per cent were “in limbo”, meaning they remained in the system with an unresolved case.
The PAC called for a “complete overhaul” of monitoring failed asylum seekers after the Home Office told the MPs they know where “some of them are”.
However, individuals “not complying with their bail conditions” would be treated as absconders, and Ms Mahmood’s department would “seek to trace them”.
It ceded it failed to count “absolutely everybody out of the country” – so it is left unaware of who is continuing to reside within Britain’s borders.
Shabana Mahmood’s department has been slated in the latest PAC report
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Robert Bates, Research Director at the Centre for Migration Control, fumed at the “utter chaos” engulfing the asylum system and slammed Whitehall for having “no plan to fix the crisis”.
“The Home Office has thrown taxpayers’ money at huge accommodation contracts with no oversight, whilst allowing an untold number of asylum seekers to simply disappear,” he continued.
“As the appeals backlog continues to surge under Labour, the fiscal and social pressures will only continue to amount on the country with no end in sight. We need a complete freeze on the asylum system at least until some semblance of order is restored.”
The PAC has called on Whitehall to predict just how many failed asylum seekers are in the country and set out deportation timeframes.
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The Home Office was accused having ‘control all but lost’
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As part of eight recommendations, the group of MPs pleaded with the Government to set out how it plans to combat illegal workers and sanction their employers.
However, the watchdog raised the alarm over the persistent problems which have survived through the years.
In December 2025, around 100,600 people were claiming asylum, which is more than two times the number recorded back in December 2019.
In 2024 and 2025, the Home Office and Ministry of Justice (MoJ) splashed out around £4.9billion on asylum spending, with accommodation costs and support costing around a staggering £3.4billion.
Meanwhile, chairman of Migration Watch, Alp Mehmet, told GB News the lack of management was “not a new phenomenon”.
Mr Mehmet added: “It is an ongoing and costly failure – costing taxpayers roughly as much as GPs and primary care services. It is also a security risk with serious implications for the safety of British citizens.
“Once asylum applicants are turned down, they should be detained and swiftly removed. Better still, the vast majority should not be admitted in the first place.”
Labour pledged to end the use of asylum hotels by 2029 by increasing the use of disused military sites and HMOs across Britain.
However, the PAC criticised past attempts at using these large and medium-sized sites due to their difficulty in implementation.
By the end of September last year, some 36,300 asylum seekers were housed in the hotels, but the PAC called on the Home Office to set out a long-term accommodation strategy.
A Home Office spokesman said: “Asylum claims are down, hotel use is falling and immigration enforcement activity is at the highest level on record – with the largest number of raids and arrests ever.
“We’ve tracked down and removed nearly 70,000 illegal migrants and foreign criminals since the Government took office – a 41 per cent increase.
“Any asylum seekers who break their bail conditions by absconding will be tracked down and arrested.”