Voluntary and community groups will be permitted to sponsor refugees to come to the UK from the autumn The Home Office has vowed to introduce new "capped safe and legal" routes for refugees to come to the UK from later this year. The department said it would allow organisations like universities, community groups and businesses to sponsor refugees who applied to come to the UK, a model based on Canada's asylum system. Alongside the new route, the government said it would press ahead with changes to how human rights and modern slavery laws are applied to asylum applications to root out what it described as "vexatious" claims. In response, the Conservatives said no extra people should be let into the country until illegal immigration was stopped. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said the new system would protect "genuine refugees" while "closing loopholes that have been too often abused". "Britain has always offered sanctuary to those  fleeing war and persecution," she said. "But this system only survives if the public trusts that it is fair,  controlled, and not open to abuse." Mahmood is attempting to shore up support for her immigration bill before Andy Burnham's expected rise to prime minister. It is set to be put before the Commons next week and its more hardline elements could be opposed by some Labour MPs. Earlier this year, she took inspiration from Denmark with an asylum system shake-up giving only temporary protection to refugees and doubling the time migrants must wait to gain permanent residency. The reforms have angered some in Labour who feel there should be more safe and legal routes to the UK to help prevent small boat crossings. The latest measures, announced on Friday night, draw on Canada's community sponsorship scheme, which has successfully resettled almost 400,000 refugees since being introduced in 1979. In Canada, 70% of sponsored refugees find work within a year - 30% higher than those resettled through government schemes, according to the Home Office. The UK already has a relatively small number of refugees who are sponsored in communities under the UK Resettlement Scheme (UKRS), but the Home Office said the "vast majority" were supported by local councils. The government has been under pressure to reduce the number of asylum seekers being housed in hotels at the taxpayers' expense, while illegal small boat arrivals have also undermined public confidence in the asylum system. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood says the new system would protect genuine refugees fleeing war and persecution The new routes would allow a wider number of organisations to support those who arrive, including "trusted universities" and community groups such as churches - though the full scope of which groups would be accepted is unclear. These organisations would be responsible for providing support to refugees in finding housing and work. The government would work with the UN High Commission on Refugees to establish eligibility - and background checks would be conducted before refugees could come to the UK. A refugee work route is expected to open next year, allowing employers to sponsor refugees, the Home Office said. Applications for the university route is set to open later this year, with the first arrivals due to take place in 2027. The government did not say how many people would be allowed to arrive under the new routes, but said it would be capped and start from a low base - and would "operate at a much higher capacity" than UKRS once it is fully established. It also said the Home Office would control which organisations could provide sponsorship and that all applicants would be subject to strict checks. Conservative shadow home secretary Chris Philp said that until illegal migration was at zero, "we shouldn't be shipping any extra people in at all on 'humanitarian grounds'". He said the measures "won't stop the boats" and accused Labour of supporting "open borders". Max Wilkinson, Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, said the plan was a "step in the right direction" but more work was needed to stop small boat arrivals. The government has been under pressure to create more safe and legal routes to the UK to help prevent small boat crossings The Community Sponsorship Alliance wants the government to let local people and communities decide who they will sponsor under the new scheme. "We urge the government not to draw eligibility criteria so narrowly that it stifles the very public goodwill that makes sponsorship work," the group's deputy chair Leonie Ansems De Vries said. Ministers have been under pressure from some on the right to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) over concerns about appeals under Article 8, enshrining a right to a family life, against rejected asylum applications. The Home Office insisted membership of the ECHR was "firmly in our national interest, especially at a time of geographical instability" but said it would tighten the definition of family to mean an immediate family member. Changes are also being planned to how the Modern Slavery Act is applied, including removing the right to protection for any foreign national who has received a custodial sentence, or where there is evidence documents have been forged. This latest announcement on UK asylum policy came as the home secretary clashed with her junior minister Mike Tapp . He used a Times article to argue foreign care workers should be exempt from the home secretary's plans to change visa rules for migrants already living in the UK in the upcoming immigration bill. Mahmood requested that Tapp be sacked but was rebuffed by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer. Between 1 January and 25 June 2026, a total of 11,638 people crossed the English Channel by small boat from France. This was down by 37% on the same period the previous year. These crossings have become the most common way for people to be detected entering the UK illegally since 2020. Nearly all those who arrive by small boat claim asylum. Under international law, this means they are allowed to stay in the country while their asylum application is considered. Small boat arrivals made up 42% of asylum applications between April 2025 to March 2026. Boats that arrived in the UK from 26 June 2025 to 25 June 2026 carried an average of 65 people. This has more than doubled since 2021. Experts say overcrowding in boats makes crossings riskier . At least 84 people died while attempting to cross the Channel in 2024, according to the United Nations (UN). When looking at the scale of small boats crossings, the number of these arrivals is about 5% of the size of total immigration into the UK from January 2025 to December 2025. The government has pledged to “smash the gangs” behind these crossings in order to reduce the numbers. People from Eritrea accounted for 18% of all arrivals from April 2025 to March 2026. In the latest figures covering January 2025 to December 2025, at least 2,000 people who arrived by small boat were found to be potential victims of human trafficking or other forms of modern slavery, according to the Home Office. Another 4,535 people were detected entering the UK without permission via other methods including hiding in vehicles, travelling on ferries or through airports from April 2025 to March 2026. This was down by 22% on the same period the previous year. There are also individuals who arrive legally, for example via a work or study visa, and then overstay their limit. The total number of people who live in the UK illegally after arriving legally is not known. An asylum seeker is someone who wants to be in the UK because they say they cannot live safely in their own country due to persecution or violence. The government must house an asylum seeker if they cannot financially support themselves while their claim is being considered. There were 93,653 people in asylum accommodation as of March 2026. About 22% of those people, 20,885, were in hotels. These are used when there is not enough shared housing available, such as houses of multiple occupation (HMOs) or former military sites . The government has pledged to stop the use of hotels by 2029. More people are in hotels across the south of England than elsewhere in the UK, while HMOs are more common in the north of England and Scotland. A modern browser with JavaScript and a stable internet connection is required to view this interactive Type in a postcode or the name of a local council below to see how many asylum seekers are housed in the area A total of 93,525 people applied for asylum in the UK from April 2025 to March 2026. This was down by 12% on the same period in the previous year. Most people who arrive in the UK by small boat claim asylum, but they were only 42% of all asylum seekers from April 2025 to March 2026. The rest include people who arrived by other illegal means or who came to the UK legally and applied for asylum while holding, or just after holding, a valid visa. It can take years for the government to decide whether someone should be granted asylum. In March 2026, 48,758 people - across 35,744 asylum applications - were waiting for an initial decision. The number of people awaiting an initial decision was down by 55% on the previous year. As of March 2026, a further 87,450 refused asylum applications were part of a second backlog, waiting the outcome of an appeal in the courts. This was up by 72% on the previous year. Together, these initial decision and appeal cases form the government’s total asylum applications backlog, which it has pledged to clear . Refugee status was granted in about 39% of asylum decisions made by the Home Office from April 2025 to March 2026. About 39% of asylum appeal cases concluded between April 2025 to March 2026 resulted in a previous refusal decision being overturned. The government requires people who are in the UK, but no longer have permission to live or work in the country, to leave. This is called a return and can happen voluntarily or involuntarily. People can lose the right to be in the UK for different reasons, such as a visa expiring, an asylum claim being refused, or by receiving a criminal conviction that results in deportation. There were 39,007 returns from April 2025 to March 2026. This was up by 7% on the same period the previous year. That number of returns is equivalent to about 6% of total emigration from the UK from January 2025 to December 2025. Of all returns from April 2025 to March 2026: 5,858 had been convicted of a criminal offence 11,918 had lodged an asylum claim at some point 2,750 had arrived in the UK by small boat People from India made up 26% of all returns from April 2025 to March 2026. The UK is trialing a scheme with France to return people who arrived in the country on a small boat. For every person the UK sends back to France, the UK will accept an equal number of asylum seekers. This is called the "one in, one out" deal. As of 15 June 2026, 921 people have been returned through this arrangement. Returns can happen in different ways. "Enforced returns", which includes deportations, means the government arranges transport to return people to a different country. In some cases, people are escorted by officers. All other returns are "voluntary". This means a person has agreed to leave and may receive government help with travel and other costs to help facilitate the return. Some people classed as leaving the country voluntarily do so completely independently and without any government knowledge or involvement . Independent returns made up 33% of the total from April 2025 to March 2026. Most people who come to the UK do so legally, after being granted a visa before they travel. A visa gives someone permission to enter or stay in the UK for a specific purpose, such as work, study or joining family members. There were 778,625 people who came to the UK via visas from April 2025 to March 2026, not including visitors or people transiting through the UK. This was down by 11% on the same period the previous year. That does not mean all those people travelled to the UK, only that they were approved to do so. The most common type of visa people came to the UK on was study, which made up 53% of all visa entries from April 2025 to March 2026. People from India were the most common group to come to the UK on study visas, making up 22% of the total. Together, people from China and India accounted for nearly half of all study visas. This has been the case for many years. The EU and UK monitor the number of people crossing borders in the Mediterranean and English Channel by sea without permission. There were 161,608 sea arrivals to the UK, Greece, Italy, Spain and Cyprus from May 2025 to April 2026. Crossings to the UK accounted for about 23% of the combined total. Sea arrivals into mainland Europe peaked in 2015, when the UN said more than a million people crossed the Mediterranean. The top three countries with the most people claiming asylum from April 2025 to March 2026 were Spain with 133,795, Italy with 124,740 and France with 111,320. The UK ranked at number five for asylum claims over the same period when compared with 26 other European countries with populations over one million. When adjusted for population size, the UK ranks at number 10 for asylum applications per 100,000 people. Net migration measures the overall change in a country’s population due to migration over a given period. It is everyone coming into the country (immigration) minus everyone who leaves (emigration). The latest available data to compare the UK with other European nations is January 2024 to December 2024. At that point, the countries with the biggest increase in their population were Spain with 626,000, Germany with 494,000 and the UK with 331,000, after taking into account the people who left the country, and those who arrived. When adjusting for population size, the UK was in position 11 for increase in population due to migration, alongside 13 other European countries with comparable data per 100,000 residents. UK migration drops to 171,000 - almost half 2024's figure Track UK's latest migration numbers - net migration, visas, asylum and small boats UK backs human rights plan to accelerate illegal migration removals Rayner warns immigration reforms risk being 'un-British'

Rockstar revealed that the price of GTA 6 will be £70 for a standard edition and £90 for its more premium edition Once, video games came with lots of physical goodies, such as guides, maps and manuals. Those days are mostly gone, but gamers have, up to now, usually been able to rely on one thing they could literally get their hands on - a disc. But when pre-orders for Grand Theft Auto 6 went live on Wednesday , developer Rockstar said customers who opted for the physical edition would get a box that just contained a code for a digital download instead. It's not the first time a physical edition has launched this way. But if the makers of one of the biggest franchises in entertainment history has decided to follow suit, does that mean the disc is dead? And what does that say about game ownership in the digital age? "My initial reaction was one of confusion and shock," Ben, a UK-based 24-year-old gamer who covers GTA news on social media under the handle 'videotech', told me following the announcement. In an interview with Variety , external in February, Strauss Zelnick, the chief executive of Take-Two, Rockstar's parent company, had said a digital-only launch was "not the plan". Ben said this led many to hope the physical disc would be available at launch too - and for more than sentimental reasons. "An important benefit of owning a disc is that you can lend the game to a friend or sell it later," he said. Online retailers selling the physical edition have stated that, as with other digital game codes, the one being offered for GTA 6 is single-use and will become invalid after it is redeemed. GTA 6 is set in a fictional US state called Leonida, which is Rockstar's version of Florida Digital sales now account for the vast majority of game revenue, and online stores such as Steam for PC and the PlayStation Store have been around for many years. The addition of consoles without physical disc drives is only helping further this trend, said Mat Piscatella, senior director and video game industry advisor at market research firm Circana. "More than half of all Xbox Series consoles in the US don't have a physical drive, while over a quarter of PS5's are the same," he posted , external . For some gamers, the news they wouldn't be able to play GTA 6 on a disc therefore felt like less of an upset. "I'm pretty much all digital these days, I download most of my games directly onto my console," Alogirlx, a gaming content creator from Canada, told the BBC's What in the World podcast. "Whether there's a physical disc or not it doesn't really change anything for me," she said. GTA 6 - all you need to know about Rockstar's blockbuster game With physical game sales at an all-time low, the issue may well be less about the disc itself than what its absence may represent. For some, it appears to be another step away from buying a physical product, and instead towards buying a licence or access to software controlled by the publisher and platform holder. Ross Scott is the founder of the growing consumer rights movement Stop Killing Games. The group is campaigning for publishers to leave online games playable if they end up switching off their servers. He told me the issue raised by Rockstar's code-in-a-box is less about the missing disc itself - after all, an online game on a disc can still become unplayable if its servers are shut down. Instead, he said, it was about a lack of trust that publishers will preserve access to games consumers have already paid for. "The problem is the industry has a very poor reputation of disabling games once they end support, so the trust from customers for many large publishers just isn't there," he said. "I don't think the lack of a disc is the problem in itself, but rather it can be a symptom of a larger, very consumer-hostile practice." The BBC has reached out to Rockstar for more details on its decision, but it is yet to comment. Chris Scullion, deputy editor of Video Games Chronicle, pointed to previous data leaks suffered by the studio as a possible explanation for why it may want to ensure its content cannot be easily ripped from a disc and shared before release. He added that the game, which has already been delayed twice , may also be "so close to the wire" in development that players could still get an out-of-date version if they picked up a disc rather than the digital edition. "A cynic would also say it's simply a way to make more money on each physical copy sold," he said. Rockstar is not the only company moving away from the traditional physical format, however. Nintendo has also shifted further towards digital distribution in recent years with the introduction of Game-Key Cards - physical cartridges that act as a key to download a game, rather than containing the game itself. With physical game sales at an all-time low, many gamers like Alogirlx are used to downloading games rather than buying the physical version The GTA franchise is one of the biggest and most profitable entertainment properties in history. GTA V has sold nearly 230 million copies, and the launch of its successor is expected to be such a major economic event that Bank of America has weighed in on its price , external . Despite this, Rockstar's announcement has prompted some independent retailers to refuse to stock the code-in-a-box version. VGP, an online retailer with a physical store in Toronto, said , external while it had "tremendous respect" for Rockstar, it was "committed to preserving the value of physical game ownership", so would not be offering the product. Lootbox Gaming, an independent retailer in Delaware, also declined to stock it, telling me the decision "speaks volumes about the future for AAA (big-budget) releases on physical media". Meanwhile, PNP Games, an online retailer with three stores in Winnipeg, has launched a petition , external , calling on Take-Two to release a physical disc version. Piscatella suggested the code "may provide a better opportunity for retailers, particularly those that don't sell used games", given the number of PlayStation 5 and Xbox consoles without disc drives. GTA 6's cover art features the game's protagonists Lucia and Jason If the disc is dying, another gaming tradition is at risk of going with it. One hallmark of a game release as big as GTA has been the midnight launch, where gamers queue up at stores, often for hours, to be the first to walk through the doors and pick up a physical copy. It's not yet clear whether shops intend to carry on the custom when the game launches on 19 November for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S and X. Ben said while he had originally planned to go to a launch in person if it happened, he will now settle for a digital version instead. But he added he hoped those that do decide to make the journey to a store will be greeted with more than just a code, if not a disc. "The coolest thing about opening a GTA game case is the unboxing/opening experience," he posted , external . "The map, the manual, it's very much part of GTA's DNA. GTA IV nailed this experience for me." "Hopefully the code comes with this at least." Sign up for our Tech Decoded newsletter to follow the world's top tech stories and trends. Outside the UK? Sign up here . GTA 6 will cost £70 - and physical edition will not contain a disc Why does GTA 6 keep getting delayed? Grand Theft Auto game creator sacked us for trying to unionise

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US President Donald Trump speaks during an event in the Oval Office of the White House on June 22, 2026 in Washington, DC. US president Donald Trump has vowed to impose a 100% import tariff on any European country that introduces a digital services tax on American technology giants. Writing on his Truth Social platform, Trump said "Numerous European countries" had been discussing bringing in such a levy and some were close to doing so. He warned that the punitive penalties would be applied immediately and would completely "supersede" any existing bilateral trade agreements. While the post targets nations planning the "imminent implementation" of new levies, the precise implications for the UK were not immediately clear, given London has had such a tax in place since 2020. "Please let this statement serve to represent that any Country that imposes such a Tax will immediately be met with a 100% TARIFF on any and all Goods sent to the United States of America," he wrote. Britain's 2% Digital Services Tax (DST) applies to major search engines, social media platforms, and online marketplaces with global revenues from their digital businesses exceeding £500 million, and total UK revenues surpassing £25 million. It impacts some of the largest US companies, including Apple, Google, Meta, and Amazon and raised more than £800 million in 2024–25, up from £678 million in 2023–24, according to the Treasury. In April, Trump said that the UK faced "a big tariff" for purportedly targeting major US companies with a tax. "They think they're going to make an easy buck, that's why they've all taken advantage of our country", Trump said at the time. The Department for Business and Trade and the Treasury have been contacted for comment. Trump's threat of retaliation against European nations that may be planning to launch or revise their own such tax comes just days after the US and EU finalised a new trade deal , external . Michael Damianos, minister of energy, commerce and industry of the Republic of Cyprus, said at the time that "the EU can respond swiftly and proportionately when the deal is not respected or its interests are at stake". France, Italy and Spain also impose a digital services tax of 3% on large companies operating in their countries, and several other EU nations have implemented or proposed , external a similar tax, according to Tax Foundation, a nonprofit group focused on tax policy. Amazon earlier this year upped its fees on sellers , external citing such taxes. Trump has attempted to impose large tariffs on many countries since he became president again in 2025. The US Supreme Court in February struck down Trump's earlier attempt to impost a global tariff of 10%. Nevertheless, the US recently announced new tariffs of 10-12.5% on dozens of countries accounting for almost all its imports over claims that such countries are not doing enough to tackle forced labour. UK mulls big tech tax changes to avoid US tariffs US announces new tariffs over forced labour concerns