Dragon Interview: MP Zöe Franklin Reviews Topical Issues

Published on: 8 Jul, 2025
Updated on: 9 Jul, 2025

It is now a full year since Zöe Franklin became the MP for Guildford and in this long-format interview with Dragon editor Martin Giles, she is invited to consider if she would do anything differently if she could have her time over again.

See also: MP Hopes Thames Water Fine Will Be ‘Final Nail in Its Coffin’

Next she reviews progress made on the three objectives she set herself on election night in July 2024: a fairer deal for Thames Water customers, two-child family allowance cap lifted and getting more NHS dentists.

Then Giles discusses with the Guildford MP a range of topical issues: the welfare budget vote, the PM’s relationship with Donald Trump and Ukraine, the “Assisted Dying Bill” (why did she vote in favour?), news of French police stopping illegal boat crossings*, and the new top-down housing targets as set by the Labour Government.

The interview was recorded on Friday, July 4.

* See: BBC on French beach as police slash migrant ‘taxi-boat’ heading to UK

To see full summary click here. To see full report click here.

For information, the following extracts are from a briefing paper in the House of Commons library.

Asylum applications

• In 2024, 84,200 applications for asylum were made in the UK, which related to 108,100 individuals (more than one applicant can be included in a single application). This was the highest annual number of applications and applicants ever recorded.
• The number of asylum applications has been high by historical standards in each of the past three years.
• The last time asylum applications were this high before that was in 2002, when 84,100 applications were made. After that the number fell sharply to reach a twenty-year low point of 17,900 in 2010. Between 2011 and 2020, it was relatively consistent at an average of 27,500 applications per year.

Small boats

• The number of asylum seekers arriving in small boats across the Channel has increased in recent years, from being a route which was almost never used prior to 2018. Between then and December 2024, around 157,000 people arrived in small boats, 95% of whom applied for asylum.
• These individuals accounted for nearly one third (29%) of the total number of people who applied for asylum in the UK between 2018 and 2024.

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