Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many people have claimed asylum in each of the last three years for which figures are available.

There were 21,843, 23,584 and 25,033 asylum applications from main applicants in 2012, 2013 and 2014 respectively.

These figures are published in the Immigration Statistics release table as_01 “Asylum applications and initial decisions for main applicants, by country of nationality”.

The Home Office publishes quarterly and annual statistics on asylum applications and initial decisions within the Immigration Statistics release. A copy of the latest release, Immigration Statistics April-June 2015, is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/home-office/series/immigration-statistics-quarterly-release.