How the UK actually compares to the rest of Europe on number of asylum applications

David Cameron stoked the immigration issue once again this week by referring to people in camps in Calais as a "bunch of migrants".

While some have claimed this was too obvious a blunder to have been a mistake, and as opposition to accepting refugees appears to keep rising, it's worth reviewing the number of applications for asylum Britain receives compared to the rest of the EU.

Between January and September 2015, data from the European Commission shows that the UK received 27,170 applications for Asylum.

Note: The numbers have only been used for these months as data is not available for some other countries from October onwards.

That places the UK eighth for the number of applications. However, when you balance for population, the country slides way down the rankings.

In addition, a recent report by the IMF also found that Britain's spending on asylum seekers was towards the bottom of the scale for European countries, constituting just 0.016 per cent of GDP.

All of these charts, of course, only cover data for asylum seekers, and are not indicative of immigration as a whole.

HT BBC Question Time