Q&A: what’s the real story behind recent UK refugee arrivals?

Britain takes in very few of the world's asylum seekers and only a minority of them arrive by boat

Q: Media reports suggest that many refugees are making a beeline for the UK. Is this correct?

A: The UK is home to just 1% of the world's 29.6 million refugees. Asylum seekers make up a very small percentage of overall migrants to the UK with study and work cited as the main reasons why people want to come to the country, according to research from Oxford's Migration Observatory. Asylum applications in the UK are relatively low - 35,099 in the year ending March 2020, significantly lower than a peak of 84,000 applications in 2002.