More than £5 million is being spent every day on hotels to house asylum seekers, it has been revealed.

Meanwhile, Home Office officials have told MPs that 96% of those who claimed asylum in 2021 are still waiting for their applications to be processed.

The shocking statistics emerged during a meeting of the cross-party Home Affairs Select Committee in Parliament this morning.

Conservative MP Tim Loughton said: “That’s a ridiculous figure.

"So we have not processed 96% of those claims from 2021 and of the 4% that have, there has been an 85% success rate?

"There has been a vast number who do not know [if their claim was upheld] and are residing in the UK at taxpayers’ expense?”

The £5.6 million being spent daily on hotels equates to more than £2 billion a year. A further £1.2 million is being spent daily on hotels for people from Afghanistan.

The Home Office also revealed there are currently 3,000 people at the Manston processing centre for asylum seekers - even though it was designed to hold 1,600 at the most.

Those being kept there are also supposed to be moved on within 24 hours, but one has been there for a month, MPs were told.

It was also confirmed that 38,000 people had tried to cross the Channel to date this year in 936 boats.

MPs were told the French authorities had this year stopped 28,000 attempted crossings and that 1,072 dinghies and small boats had been destroyed.

Mr Loughton questioned what he termed “the hit-rate of the French authorities” in intercepting the boats “despite the extra resources we have given them”.

Dan O'Mahoney, Clandestine Channel Threat Commander, said the French have stopped 42.5% of people making the crossing this year, compared with 50% last year.

While fewer had been intercepted in percentage terms, he said the actual numbers compared with 2021 was significantly more.

Officials confirmed that the French authorities did not detain those who they had intercepted because of the nature of legislation.

Among those arriving on the boats this year, 12,000 were Albanians, compared with 800 in 2021.

Mr O'Mahoney said Albanian criminal gangs have gained a foothold in northern France.

But he said the crackdown on people smugglers taking groups across the Channel was having some success.

He referred to a joint intelligence cell on which UK and French authorities collaborated that had been successful in closing down criminal gangs.

“It has dismantled 55 organised groups and has made 500 arrests since it was established,” he said.

The committee later heard from David Neal, Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, about the conditions at Manston.

He visited the site on Monday in response to concerns raised about conditions there and said he was left speechless.

Mr Neal said that his visit came after he had picked up what he described as a lot of noise about standards and over-crowding.

“What was really concerning and alarming was that the numbers were outstripping capacity on the site," he said.

"When I visited on Monday I was told there were 2,800 detainees. Of the order of 2,500 detainees were being guarded by a mix of untrained custody officers and security guards.

"It was sufficiently alarming that I was left speechless.”

He had written to the then Home Secretary about the situation on Monday night.