Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer is facing increasing frustration over his government's handling of asylum hotels and the small boats crisis, a new opinion poll has found.
Protests about the using hotels to house asylum seekers continued over the bank holiday weekend, with counter-demonstrations also taking place, resulting in scuffles in some cases as police kept the two sides apart.
A poll for The Times newspaper has found 71 per cent of respondents believe the Prime Minister is mishandling the issue of asylum hotels.
The poll, carried out by YouGov, also found 37 per cent of voters viewed immigration and asylum as the most important issue facing the country, ahead of 25 per cent who said the economy and 7 per cent the health service.
When it comes to the party voters believe is best able to handle the problem of asylum and immigration, Reform UK came in at 31 per cent, with Labour on 9 per cent and the Conservatives 6 per cent.
The Prime Minister has set out measures to speed up the asylum appeals system to aid the removal of people with no right to be in the UK.
But former Labour home secretary David Blunkett said the government had so far failed to offer a "comprehensive answer or an understandable narrative" on tackling the crisis.
Lord Blunkett, who has suggested temporarily suspending elements of the European Convention on Human Rights and the UN Refugee Convention to deal with the problem, called for Mr Starmer to be "radical" in his approach.
"I think that the individual measures the government has taken are extremely helpful in their own right but don't add up either to a comprehensive answer or an understandable narrative,” he told The Times.
"At the moment the issue is so toxic and beginning to get out of the government's grip to the point it is very hard to bring it back. A further package of actions is absolutely vital to start controlling both the public narrative and the delivery."
There were 32,059 asylum seekers in UK hotels by the end of the June. Labour has promised to end the use of the sites for those purposes by 2029.
Protests about the use of hotels to house asylum seekers began after one staying at The Bell Hotel in Epping, on the outskirts of London, was charged with sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl.
The area’s local council secured an injunction halting the use of the hotel to house asylum seekers and there are reports that others are planning similar legal action.
So far this year, a record 28,288 people have crossed the English Channel in small boats, 46 per cent more than in the same period in 2024.
Official figures released this month show a total of 111,084 people applied for asylum in the UK in the year to June 2025, the highest number for any 12-month period since records began in 2001.
There are about 51,000 asylum appeals waiting to be heard, each taking on average more than a year for a decision, with the backlog now thought to be the biggest cause of pressure in the asylum accommodation system.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said "completely unacceptable" delays in the appeals process left failed asylum seekers in the system for years.
The government has put forward plans for a new system where a panel of independent adjudicators, rather than tribunal judges, deals with appeals over asylum decisions.
Ms Cooper said the overhaul would result in a system which is "swift, fair and independent, with high standards in place".
But the Refugee Council's Imran Hussain said: "The fastest way to speed up asylum appeals is to get decisions right first time. At the moment, nearly half of appeals are successful, meaning that the initial decision was wrong."
The UK recently agreed a deal with Iraq to return illegal migrants as part of wider moves to curtail small boat crossings.
Similar agreements have already been made with Albania and Vietnam since Labour came to power.
Another deal with France recently came into force, where small boat migrants who have arrived over the English Channel from the French coast can be returned.
