Just 1% of asylum seekers in UK genuine, insider says, as UN blasts Britain for allowing bogus claims

TOI correspondent from London: “At best 1% of asylum seekers in the UK are genuine,” a home office whistleblower has said, adding that most claims are scripted and bogus but still get granted.The United Nations refugee agency has criticised the home office, too, over risks that migrants are being granted asylum in the UK “even though they are not entitled to it” after finding in an audit that in a third of cases the “full basis of the applicant’s claim remained unclear”.The home office official, who worked for years as a decision-maker on asylum claims, told the UK Times newspaper: “There’s almost no aspect of the asylum system that isn’t either a massive fraud or just really dysfunctional.”He said many asylum seekers used the “same script” but staff won’t check their claims with their country of origin, as doing so could place individuals at risk.He saw hundreds of claims from Pakistani asylum seekers saying they are gay who all claimed to have the same boyfriend – a man who has provided hundreds of “very obviously fake letters of support” to all of them.The men all submitted photographs from the same London gay venue, Legs 800 Club, which closed permanently last year, standing topless with their arms around each other.

A large number of Bangladeshi asylum seekers in recent years have been claiming they faced political persecution in Bangladesh because of their membership of the Awami League, the whistleblower said.Yet despite claiming to hold senior positions in the Awami League, or its student wing, Chhatra, they were unable to provide any substantive details about its policies and could only cite its slogan.A large number of Iraqi Kurds claiming asylum said they had been in a relationship with the same daughter of the prime minister of the Kurdistan region, he said, adding that this had become a “running joke” among colleagues.In the year ending June 2026, Indians were the eighth top nationality to claim asylum in Britain, making 4,964 claims.UK-born PIO Gujarati-origin former British diplomat Ameer Kotecha said: “How on earth can there be almost 5,000 asylum seekers from India? India is treated by the home office as a designated safe state.”“Almost all of these claims from Indian nationals will be bogus,” Kotecha claimed.A home office spokesperson said they “do not comment on anonymous briefings”.