LONDON (Reuters) - Britain on Monday denied its immigration system was crumbling in the face of a stream of asylum seekers but said the government would shake it up. „The system is not being overwhelmed but the numbers are high,“ Home Secretary Jack Straw told BBC radio. He said Britain was 11th out of 15 European Union countries in terms of asylum seekers as a proportion of population. The immigration service union on Monday said its members could not cope with an influx of asylum seekers, not least from war-torn Kosovo. Tensions have flared most obviously in the Channel port of Dover. Eleven people were injured in clashes last week, where 800 asylum seekers are living among the town‘s 41,000 residents. Straw said he went to Dover three weeks ago. „It‘s not out of control but there is no question that the staff are under very severe pressure and so is the citizenry,“ he said. Straw said the government had responded by putting 120 million pounds ($194 million) into turning the system around over the next three years and recruiting an extra 600 staff. But his opposition Conservative counterpart, Ann Widdecombe, on Monday accused Straw of complacency by waiting for his controversial asylum and immigration bill to pass through parliament next April before acting. Straw retorted that he had spent two years clearing up the „shambles“ left by the previous Conservative government and announced a string of interim measures to relieve the pressure until his bill is passed. They will allow limits to be set on the number of asylum seekers each local authority has to put up, and provide for the transfer of asylum seekers from overburdened local authorities to those with spare accomodation. The Labour government is pushing its asylum bill through parliament and has already rowed back on key details in the face of a threatened revolt from its own backbench MPs. Ministers say the bill will overhaul a cumbersome system and allow faster processing of asylum claims. The current system takes months, sometimes years, to decide if a claimant has a legitimate claim for asylum or is an economic migrant. But the government backed down on a key section which said that asylum seekers would be denied all state benefits and must survive on food and clothing vouchers plus one pound a day for adults and 50 pence for children.