Staggering cost of tackling illegal migration REVEALED: Investigation explores EXACTLY how much Britain is spending

The latest figure for the 2023-2024 cost of 'tackling illegal migration' is £6.6bn.

This indicated a rise from the 2023/24 Main Estimates budget which sought £1.45bn, according to the Supplementary Estimates Memorandum (2023/24) for the Home Office.

Tackling illegal migration is one part of the Home Office's budget which aims to reduce the level and impact of illegal migration to the UK, by reducing small boat crossings, making faster decisions on asylum and modern slavery cases, and removing more people who have no right to be in the UK.

When compared to budgets that tackle the same issues in past years like the ‘Asylum Support, Resettlement and Accommodation’ budget, the costs have increased.

The Home Office say this dramatic increase is due to a rise in small boat crossings, the market price for accommodation and the resettlement grants for Afghanis and Ukrainians.

Costs for other areas of asylum expenditure such as implementation costs for the new Illegal Migration Act are not captured within this estimate line but have also driven up costs in the Home Office budget.

In total, the Home Office budget for 2023-24 is just shy of £20 billion (£19.6bn Resource DEL), according to the Home Office Annual Report and accounts for 2023 to 2024.

However, the Home Office does not break down its expenditure in all areas of activity according to the specific share of migration costs.

Some of the other line items from the Home Office's accounts include the Public Safety Group, Homeland Security Group, Migration and Borders Group, Strategic Operations for Illegal Migration, Customer Services (Visas & Passport), Border Force, Immigration Enforcement, Corporate and Delivery, Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT), Science, Technology, Analysis and Research (STAR), Strategy, Legal, Communications and Arm’s Length Bodies (ALBs).

In addition to the day-to-day revenue costs, the Home Office has been forced to seek approval for increased capital items totalling £1.4 billion (£1,399.8 million).

This is an increase of £468.5 million (50.3 per cent) compared with its initial budget of £931.3 million, according to Supplementary Estimates Memorandum (2023/24) for the Home Office.

The main drivers of the growing costs include:

• £130 million to implement the Illegal Migration Act.
• £47 million to fund the Illegal Migration Taskforce.
• £30 million to tackle money laundering as part of the 2019 Economic Crime Plan.

The HM Treasury also agreed on:

• £140.3m Resource DEL to Capital DEL switch, £135.4m of this relates to implementing the measures set out in the Ten Point Plan to tackle the illegal migration crossing and fix the UK’s asylum system.
• £149.4m (net) in return for the Resource DEL surrender.

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The Government’s own Independent Chief Inspector for Borders and Immigration, David Neal before being sacked reported to the Home Secretary in February this year: “I have previously highlighted the inexcusably awful quality of Home Office data”

Mr Neal describes a chaotic and dysfunctional department that is unable to implement its own policies.

He accused the Home Office of a clear disconnect between policymakers in Whitehall and operational staff in airports, migrant centres and asylum processing centres.

It comes as more than 18,000 small boat migrants have crossed the English Channel so far this year as official figures from the Home Office show 11 small boats made it into UK waters on Sunday.

Sunday's arrivals in the UK take the total number of migrants who have crossed from France in small boats this year to 18,342.

The new Labour Government is in the process of creating a Border Security Command to focus more heavily on the people smuggling gangs making millions from the illegal trade.

The Government have also planned to reduce the backlog of asylum applications by fast-tracking approvals of 70-90,000 illegal migrants in short order, scrap the Rwanda Scheme and cancel the Bibby Stockholm barge.

A Labour spokesman said: "On July 4th, the Tories left the new government the worst start to a year ever for small boat arrivals, 19 per cent up on the year before; they left a broken asylum system, with tens of thousands stuck in limbo, and £8m a day being spent on hotel accommodation; and they left a Rwanda scheme which was costing hundreds of millions of pounds, failing to deport anyone bar a handful of volunteers, and making zero difference to the number of small boat arrivals.

"In the six weeks since the election, Labour has created the new Border Security Command, got returns flights moving again, and put 100 additional caseworkers onto clearing the asylum backlog. Where they sat on their hands and made up gimmicks, we are taking concrete action to deal with this problem."