BBC News Reality Check

Asked what the government was doing about speeding up the processing of asylum claims, the prime minister said: “We’ve increased the number of processing officials by 80%”.

Home Office official Abi Tierney told a committee of MPs a week ago that they had increased the number of asylum decision makers by 584 to 1,073, which is an increase of 119%, although neither she nor the prime minister gave a time period.

In the same session, David Neal, independent chief inspector of borders and immigration, said the figure for decision makers was 1,090, with another 139 coming online in November.

Mr Neal’s report on asylum casework from last year put the number of decision makers in March 2021 at just under 600. If that has now been increased to 1,090 that would be an increase of about 80%.

We have asked the Home Office where the 80% figure came from.

At Prime Minister's Questions, Conservative MP Scott Benton said that taxpayers face “a bill of £5.6m per day” to accommodate “nearly 40,000 illegal immigrants who crossed the Channel this year”.

We’ve heard that figure before from Abi Tierney, director general for customer services capability at the Home Office.

She told a committee of MPs a week ago that the cost of hotel accommodation for asylum seekers was £5.6m a day, although that was the figure for all asylum seekers, not just those who had arrived in small boats.

It’s also not just for those who arrived this year - we know that only 4% of those who arrived in small boats in 2021 have had an asylum decision.

Ms Tierney said that on top of that, £1.2m per day is spent on hotel accommodation for people brought over from Afghanistan, bringing the bill to a total of £6.8m a day.

Labour leader Keir Starmer asked the prime minister how many asylum claims from those who arrived in the UK on small boats last year had been processed.

Rishi Sunak didn't give a figure in his reply but Mr Starmer went on to say 4% of them.

This is correct.

Speaking to the Home Affairs Committee last week, Dan Hobbs - Director of Asylum, Protection and Enforcement at the Home Office - said about small boat arrivals in 2021: “96% of those claims remain outstanding".

He added that of the 4% of claims which had been processed, around 85% were given asylum.

You can read more about the backlog in asylum applications - and the problems it is causing - here.

Almost 40,000 people have crossed the Channel in small boats so far this year, which is already considerably more than the 28,526 who crossed in the whole of 2021.

In the first six months of 2022, more than half the people arriving in small boats were from three countries:

• 18% came from Albania
• 18% from Afghanistan
• 15% from Iran

The number of people arriving from Albania has risen particularly sharply this year.

For the whole of last year, Iranians were the biggest group, accounting for 30% of all small boat arrivals. Another 21% were Iraqis, 11% Eritreans and 9% Syrians.

In 2021, 75% of all small boat arrivals were men aged 18 to 39 - with about 5% of arrivals being men aged 40 or over. Seven per cent were women aged over 18, and 12% were children under 18 (of whom three-quarters were male).

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During Prime Minister's Questions, Rishi Sunak said there were “3,500 more doctors and over 9,000 more nurses working this year than last”.

He’s got his numbers about right. There were about 4,000 more community and hospital doctors, and 9,230 more nurses and health visitors working in the NHS in England in June 2022 (the latest figures available) compared with the previous June. That’s an increase of about 3% each.

However, NHS data suggests the number of vacant nursing posts may have increased slightly since last year.

That might mean there are more staff coming on board, but possibly not fast enough to keep up with growing demand.

During PMQs a little earlier, Sunak said to Starmer: “I would hope he would welcome the news today that there are over 15,000 new police officers on our streets.”

The Conservative Party manifesto in 2019 set a target to recruit 20,000 additional police officers in England and Wales by March 2023.

That was an attempt to reverse the cuts in the period since 2010, when the number of officers had fallen by about 19,000.

Today, figures show that just over 15,300 of those officers have been recruited. This means that police forces still have to recruit almost 5,000 more officers to meet the Spring deadline.

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The latest information from US space agency Nasa suggests the fire that broke out on the slopes of Africa’s highest peak, Mount Kilimanjaro, last week is still active, after dying down in recent days.

Nasa's Fire Information for Resource Management System, which uses satellite data to detect thermal hot spots, shows the fire has spread again, after burning in just one place over the weekend.

On Sunday, the Tanzanian authorities said firefighters and volunteers had managed to contain large parts of the fire. They were tackling the blaze in a ravine near a popular camp site for hikers.

The government is yet to issue another update.

The fire comes two years after a week-long inferno destroyed thousands of hectares of woodland on Mount Kilimanjaro's slopes.

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Information collected by US space agency, Nasa, appears to corroborate the claim by the Tanzanian authorities that much of the fire on the slopes of Africa’s highest peak, Mount Kilimanjaro, has been contained.

Nasa’s Fire Information for Resource Management System, which uses satellite data to detect thermal hot spots, showed a fire burning in just one place on Sunday.

The system doesn’t indicate any active fire in the location on Monday – although it’s possible the latest data has not yet been uploaded.

The most recent aerial satellite image of the fire – taken on Sunday - doesn’t give us a clear enough view of what’s happened because of cloud cover.

However, a satellite image from Saturday showed a thick cloud of smoke rising, with the fire burning across a length of about 3 km (1.9 miles).

The fire comes two years after a week-long inferno destroyed thousands of hectares of woodland on Mount Kilimanjaro's slopes.

Mount Kilimanjaro, which is 5,895m (19,341ft) high, is a popular tourist destination and tens of thousands of people climb it every year.

Read more about the fire here.