The home secretary has said the government’s action to tackle the number of asylum seekers coming to the UK had been an important step to “restoring order”,Responding to new immigration statistics, Yvette Cooper said Labour had overseen increased numbers of returns of asylum seekers not granted asylum and pointed to the reduced spending on asylum,According to the PA news agency, Cooper said:We inherited a broken immigration and asylum system that the previous government left in chaos,Since coming to office we have strengthened Britain’s visa and immigration controls, cut asylum costs and sharply increased enforcement and returns, as today’s figures show,The action we have taken in the last 12 months – increasing returns of failed asylum seekers by over 30%, cutting asylum costs by 11%, reducing the backlog by 18% and our forthcoming plans to overhaul the failing asylum appeal system – are crucial steps to restoring order and putting an end to the chaotic use of asylum hotels that we inherited from the previous government.

At the same time, we are bringing legal migration back under control, with a 48% reduction in work visas this year – and further stronger visa controls and higher skill requirements introduced through our white paper expected to bring those overall numbers down further.As we roll out further reforms, including the new pilot with France, new counter terror powers to strengthen border security and new asylum reforms later this year (including reforms to speed up the persistent delays in the appeals system), we will continue to take the serious steps required to restore order, control and fairness to the system, and to continue building the foundations of a new and stronger approach.Figures published by the Home Office on Thursday showed that the number of quarterly enforced returns of people who do not have a right to stay in the UK rose slightly from 2,314 in January-March 2025 to 2,323 in April-June 2025.A total of 9,072 enforced returns took place in the year to June, up 25% from 7,253 in the previous year and the highest figure for a 12-month period since the year to December 2018 (9,236).The Home Office is responsible for returning people to their country of origin if they do not have a legal right to remain in the UK.

There are three types of returns: enforced returns, which are carried out directly by the Home Office; voluntary returns, who are people who were facing deportation but left of their own accord, sometimes with support from the Home Office; and port returns, who are people refused entry to the UK and who have subsequently departed.This live blog will be closing shortly.Thank you for reading the updates and commenting below the line.You can keep up to date with the Guardian’s UK politics coverage here.Here is a summary from today’s blog:The number of asylum seekers being housed in hotels has risen by 8% to 32,059 in a year, according to Home Office data.

The figures come amid growing clamour from councils to block hotels being used to house asylum seekers through legal action, after a court ruled that more than 100 applicants staying in Essex should be removed.The latest Home Office figures, published on Thursday as part of the usual quarterly immigration statistics, cover Labour’s first year in office.For the first time in four years, the asylum applications backlog has fallen below 100,000 people.It is now just over 70,000 cases, relating to almost 91,000 people – down by 18% from a year earlier and its lowest since September 2021.The Refugee Council said it welcomed “initial progress” in reducing the asylum backlog but said there were still “far too many people in hotels.

Everyone agrees that hotels are the wrong answer – they cost the taxpayer billions, trap people in limbo and are flashpoints in communities”.In the year ending June 2025, the Home Office forcibly removed 9,100 people – up a quarter on the previous year.More than half were foreign national offenders who were being deported at the end of sentences.The home secretary said the government’s action to tackle the number of asylum seekers coming to the UK had been an important step to “restoring order”.Responding to the new immigration statistics, Yvette Cooper said Labour had overseen increased numbers of returns of asylum seekers not granted asylum and pointed to the reduced spending on asylum.

Kemi Badenoch has written to Conservative council leaders “encouraging” them to follow Epping Forest district council’s footsteps by launching bids to shut these hotels, if their “legal advice supports it”.Labour dismissed Badenoch’s letter as “desperate and hypocritical nonsense”, but several of its own local authorities have already suggested they too, could mount legal action against hotels in their areas.Charles Falconer, a Labour peer who served as justice secretary under Tony Blair and was previously Keir Starmer’s shadow attorney general, urged ministers to appeal against the court decision to close the Bell hotel in Epping.He told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme the judgment “causes great problems” because it “gives rise to the expectation that some asylum hotels can be closed” but without indicating which ones.There has been an 80% drop in the number of visas granted for nurses over the past 12 months, according to Home Office figures.

For work-related visas, 182,553 visas were granted in the year to June, which represents a 36% drop on the previous year.The government said the 80% fall in visas for nurses may be due to “the end of the centrally supported nurse international recruitment programme and changes in demand for international staff”.Responding to Thursday’s immigration figures showing a rise over the past year in the number of asylum seekers housed in hotels, Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesperson Lisa Smart said the Conservatives had “trashed our immigration system and let numbers spiral”, but now “this Labour government is failing to get a grip on the crisis”.Nigel Farage responded to the Home Office figures by saying the public was right to be angry with the government and their predecessors over the rise in asylum seekers being housed in hotels by the government.People have “every right to engage in protest”, the shadow home secretary has said, amid concerns a high court ruling could trigger a wave of demonstrations outside asylum hotels.

Chris Philp named three Conservative-led councils which are considering taking legal action against hoteliers whose property is being used to house asylum seekers,Philp said that the Conservatives were wrong to have used so many hotels to house asylum seekers while they were in government,Asked whether the number of hotels in use had been a mistake, Philp told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: “Yes it was,We wanted to get it down,And we did get it down.

In the last nine months we halved the number of asylum hotels and had that trend continued by now there would be no asylum hotels.”The UK’s “broken” immigration system is spilling over into tensions in communities in Northern Ireland, a Stormont minister has said.Education minister Paul Givan made the comments as unionist politicians have asked for further investigations into the legal planning status of hotels in the region housing asylum seekers.The charity Safe Passage International has described the government as “working to shut down family reunion even further” due to its new scheme from France, part of the recent “one in, one out” deal, excluding unaccompanied children.Responding to Thursday’s Home Office figures, Donna Covey, chief executive at Safe Passage International said: “Over 5000 children have crossed the Channel in the year ending June 2025, over half of those children have had to make this dangerous journey alone.

”The UK government borrowed less than expected in July, official figures show, in a boost to the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, as she faces pressure ahead of her autumn budget.Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed public sector net borrowing – the difference between public spending and income – fell to £1.1bn, down by £2.3bn from the same month a year earlier.Speaking on GCSE results day for England, Wales and Northern Ireland, education minister Catherine McKinnell said the government is “tackling” the barriers to better grades after she was asked why white working-class children are “doing so badly”.

McKinnell said the question was a “really profound” one and that underachievement in that demographic “has persisted over many years”.There has been an overall rise in grades among 16-year-olds taking GCSEs and the gap between boys and girls has narrowed to its smallest level since 2016.Labour more than doubled their donations in 2024, according to newly published figures, but still made a loss after spending a record amount on the general election campaign.The party’s annual accounts for last year, which were published alongside those of every significant UK political party, show it managed to attract nearly £40m in donations last year, up from £16.5m in the previous year.

But the party’s huge election spending sapped it of money, leading to an overall deficit of £3,8m,The Electoral Commission has previously reported Labour spent a record £30m on fighting the general election – ahead of the Conservatives, who spent £24m,The deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, has been hit with a legal challenge after she overruled a local council to approve a hyperscale datacentre on green belt land by the M25 in Buckinghamshire,Campaigners bringing the action are complaining that no environmental impact assessment was made for the 90MW datacentre, which was approved as part of the Labour government’s push to turn the UK into an AI powerhouse by trebling computing capacity to meet rising demand amid what it terms “a global race” as AI usage takes off.

England will sell off more than eight times as many council homes in 2025-26 as were constructed the previous year, research has found.Right to buy is depleting council housing stock more quickly than public housing can be replaced, forcing people to spend more money on private market rents and obtain less secure tenancies, a report from the thinktank Common Wealth finds.Stella Creasy and Richard Tice are pushing for Labour to allow a Brexit scrutiny committee to be formed in parliament, after the Guardian revealed environmental protections had been eroded since the UK left the EU.The Labour and Reform UK MPs argue that there is no scrutiny or accountability over how Brexit is being implemented.Creasy, the MP for Walthamstow and chair of the Labour Movement for Europe, said the UK needed a “salvage operation” to clear up the environmental and regulatory havoc caused by Brexit.

The UK’s business activity posted its biggest growth in a year this month, led by a solid upturn in the service sector, according to a closely watched survey.The ‘flash’ reading from the S&P Global PMI survey showed improvement across the private sector, despite employment remaining a weak spot, with companies cutting hiring for an eleventh month.The number of young people not in education, employment or training (known as Neets) has increased, figures show.The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said there was an increase in the number of Neets aged 16 to 24 in the three months to June to 948,000, up from 923,000 in January to March.Ireland’s premier and deputy premier have welcomed clarity on the EU-US trade deal, which sees the US commit to capping tariffs on pharma goods at 15%.

Taoiseach Micheál Martin said the trade agreement represented a “significant win” for the EU while Tanaiste Simon Harris said it offered an “important shield” for Irish exporters.Construction work has begun on a “landmark” windfarm in the south of Scotland that will generate enough electricity to power about 335,000 homes.The Sanquhar II community windfarm will become the UK’s fourth largest onshore windfarm when it becomes operational in August 2026, according to developers CWP Energy.The SNP government has been accused of a “national scandal” after it was revealed that hundreds of NHS buildings are more than 70 years old.A Scottish Liberal Democrat freedom of information request to all of Scotland’s health boards found the NHS still relies on 597 buildings that were built seven decades ago.

In December, it was reported that NHS Scotland’s maintenance backlog was more than £1.3bn.Retired women effectively go more than four months every year without getting a pension because of a gender gap, according to research by the Trades Union Congress (TUC).It estimated women were losing the equivalent of £7,600 a year on average.The union organisation said compared with men, retired women effectively stop receiving pension income from today.

The government has revived the pension commission, which will bring together unions, employer and independent experts to look into the causes of the gap.England will sell off more than eight times as many council homes in 2025-26 as were constructed the previous year, research has found.Right to buy is depleting council housing stock more quickly than public housing can be replaced, forcing people to spend more money on private market rents and obtain less secure tenancies, a report from the thinktank Common Wealth finds.Its analysis of government data in England found that 38,170 social homes and 2,850 council homes were constructed by the government in 2023-24.In 2024-25, 2,260 council homes were built.

There were 13,966 sell-offs of council houses through right to buy in 2023-24 and 8,656 in 2024-25.It is estimated that 18,500 council homes will be sold off in 2025-26 – more than eight times more than the number built in 2024-25.The report concludes that if the government wants to increase the supply of social rental housing quickly, it must invest in buying back and restoring homes sold off under right to buy, alongside more council housebuilding.Adam Peggs, the report’s author, said:We need to pull every effective lever we can find to expand public housing.Council housing gave people secure, low-cost homes in the past.

With the right framework, it can give people high-quality, genuinely affordable homes, with real democratic voice in the future too,But we need to build the political will to make it happen,Every day of delay is another day families languish in squalid temporary accommodation,The government has the tools to turn this emergency around – and more quickly than they might admit – they just need to use them,The report, published on Thursday, also calls for expanded “right of first refusal” powers, enabling local authorities to be the preferred buyer when ex-social homes and private rental homes enter the market.

Ireland’s premier and deputy premier have welcomed clarity on the EU-US trade deal, which sees the US commit to capping tariffs on pharma goods at 15%.Taoiseach Micheál Martin said the trade agreement represented a “significant win” for the EU while Tanaiste Simon Harris said it offered an “important shield” for Irish exporters.The EU struck a trade deal with the US on 27 July, five days before Donald Trump said a 30% tariff would kick in for the bloc.The deal sees 15% tariffs on most EU goods including cars, semiconductors and pharmaceuticals entering the US.There are “zero for zero” tariffs on a number of products including aircrafts and aircraft parts, some agricultural goods and certain chemicals – as well as EU purchases of US energy worth $750bn over three years.

The PA news agency reports that in the aftermath of the deal, it was not clear whether 15% would remain the rate for the pharma sector or be increased.The EU-US statement published on Thursday said that as of 1 September, the US will apply a maximum tariff rate of 15% on generic pharmaceuticals, their ingredients and chemical precursors.Irish premier Micheál Martin said the statement brought “greater clarity and certainty” to what the EU-US agreement would mean in practice.He said:This is especially important for enterprises that either import from or export to the US.Given the scale of the pharmaceutical and semiconductor sectors in Ireland, it is important that the joint statement confirms that 15% is a ceiling that will apply to EU exports in these areas in all circumstances, including when the current US section 232 investigations are concluded.

While I have been clear all along that I do not support tariffs, this is a significant win for the EU.Given the significance of the airline sector to Ireland, a specific carve-out for aircraft and aircraft parts is also welcome.There are areas where further work remains to be done, including a potential carve-out for med-tech products and spirits.I hope this will be advanced as quickly as possible.We will continue to advocate for these sectors given their significant importance to our domestic economy.

The deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, has been hit with a legal challenge after she overruled a local council to approve a hyperscale datacentre on green belt land by the M25 in Buckinghamshire,Campaigners bringing the action are complaining that no environmental impact assessment was made for the 90MW datacentre, which was approved as part of the Labour government’s push to turn the UK into an AI powerhouse by trebling computing capacity to meet rising demand amid what it terms “a global race” as AI usage takes off,The home counties datacentre is relatively small compared with one planned in north Lincolnshire that will have about 10 times the capacity, and is dwarfed by one planned by Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg in Louisiana, which will be more than 50 times larger as he seeks to achieve digital “superintelligence”,But Foxglove, the tech equity campaign group bringing the legal challenge alongside the environmental charity Global Action Plan, said the energy demand could push up local electricity prices and said it was “baffling” that the government had not carried out an environmental assessment,Oliver Hayes, the head of campaigns at Global Action Plan, said Rayner’s “lack of meaningful scrutiny” was a worrying signal as more datacentres were planned around the UK.

“Are the societal benefits of chatbots and deepfakes really worth sacrificing progress towards a safe climate and dependable water supply?” he said.“The government must reconsider its rash decision or risk an embarrassing reality check in court.”An ageing population, a funding squeeze and a recruitment crisis have taken England’s adult social care system to breaking point.In this episode of Politics Weekly UK, recorded and first published in March, John Harris visited Greater Manchester to find out what a day in the life of a care worker looked like and whether it was too late to save this vital service:Stella Creasy and Richard Tice are pushing for Labour to allow a Brexit scrutiny committee to be formed in parliament, after the Guardian revealed environmental protections had been eroded since the UK left the EU.The Labour and Reform UK MPs argue that there is no scrutiny or accountability over how Brexit is being implemented