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The Home Office has “all but lost control” of Britain’s asylum system, MPs have warned in a damning report exposing soaring costs, huge backlogs and missing failed asylum seekers. A hard-hitting investigation by Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) concluded that years of reactive policymaking have left the system on the brink, with ministers unable to demonstrate a clear long-term strategy for dealing with asylum claims, accommodation and removals.

The cross-party committee said the Home Office’s admission that it only knows the location of the “vast majority” of failed asylum seekers was “shocking and unacceptable”, and called for a complete overhaul of how those with no right to remain in the UK are monitored. MPs demanded ministers estimate how many failed asylum seekers are currently in the country, explain how they will trace those with whom they have lost contact and set out realistic timescales for removals.

The report paints a picture of a system struggling under the weight of years of unresolved cases. In December 2025, around 100,600 people were claiming asylum in the UK – more than double the figure recorded six years earlier.

The committee also found that 41% of people who claimed asylum in January 2023 were still waiting for their cases to be resolved, leaving thousands stuck in prolonged uncertainty.

The financial burden on taxpayers has also continued to rise. The Home Office and Ministry of Justice spent around £4.9 billion on asylum in 2024-25, including £3.4 billion on accommodation and support.

Although the Government has pledged to end the use of asylum hotels by 2029, around 36,300 asylum seekers were still being housed in hotels at the end of September 2025.

MPs warned that plans to replace hotels with large-scale accommodation sites risk repeating previous costly failures, including the controversial Bibby Stockholm barge and the former HMP Northeye site.

PAC chairman Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown said the committee’s inquiry had uncovered a “disturbing picture”.

“Our report provides an end-to-end snapshot of the entire asylum system, and its findings paint a disturbing picture – at the time of our inquiry, control of it had been all but lost,” he said.

“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 added: “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.”

The committee also criticised the Home Office’s management of asylum accommodation contracts, noting that officials had to “claw back” £46 million from providers last year amid concerns about excessive profits.

Sir Geoffrey said: “The bungled approach to the Northeye site also speaks to a deeper issue of the Home Office’s severe lack of commercial capabilities.

“It is indefensible that accommodation deemed unfit to house asylum seekers is now being looked at as part of plans to increase the UK’s housing stock.

“If it is not fit for asylum seekers, why is it fit for our homeless population?”

The PAC has now ordered the Home Office to produce a long-term accommodation strategy, improve data sharing across Government and develop a clear risk management plan to prevent what it described as a cycle of repeated failures.