Asked by: Angela Crawley (Scottish National Party - Lanark and Hamilton East)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the answer of 7 July 2023 to Question 191605 on Asylum: staff, what progress she has made on recruiting asylum decision makers to take their number to 2500 by September 2023.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
There is currently work underway to redesign the training of Asylum decision makers. The current plan will see the initial training reduced from 9 to 2-3 weeks with further training given as the decision maker progresses.
As of 01 May 2023, there are 1,280 full time equivalent (FTE) Asylum Decision Makers. This information is published online: Statistics relating to the Illegal Migration Bill on GOV.UK (www.gov.uk). Please note that this data is provisional and includes the number of asylum decision makers employed from the beginning of each month from August 2019 to May 2023.
The latest Home Office statistics show asylum decisions are up in the year ending March 2023, with a 35% increase in asylum decisions from the previous year which may be in part due to the increase in the number of asylum decision makers employed by the Home Office.
We are on track to clear the legacy asylum backlog by the end of 2023.
Asked by: Angela Crawley (Scottish National Party - Lanark and Hamilton East)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 7 July 2023 to Question 191605 on Asylum: staff, how long it takes to train a newly recruited decision maker.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
There is currently work underway to redesign the training of Asylum decision makers. The current plan will see the initial training reduced from 9 to 2-3 weeks with further training given as the decision maker progresses.
As of 01 May 2023, there are 1,280 full time equivalent (FTE) Asylum Decision Makers. This information is published online: Statistics relating to the Illegal Migration Bill on GOV.UK (www.gov.uk). Please note that this data is provisional and includes the number of asylum decision makers employed from the beginning of each month from August 2019 to May 2023.
The latest Home Office statistics show asylum decisions are up in the year ending March 2023, with a 35% increase in asylum decisions from the previous year which may be in part due to the increase in the number of asylum decision makers employed by the Home Office.
We are on track to clear the legacy asylum backlog by the end of 2023.
Asked by: Angela Crawley (Scottish National Party - Lanark and Hamilton East)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether her Department is on track to clear all legacy asylum claims made before 28 June 2022.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
There is currently work underway to redesign the training of Asylum decision makers. The current plan will see the initial training reduced from 9 to 2-3 weeks with further training given as the decision maker progresses.
As of 01 May 2023, there are 1,280 full time equivalent (FTE) Asylum Decision Makers. This information is published online: Statistics relating to the Illegal Migration Bill on GOV.UK (www.gov.uk). Please note that this data is provisional and includes the number of asylum decision makers employed from the beginning of each month from August 2019 to May 2023.
The latest Home Office statistics show asylum decisions are up in the year ending March 2023, with a 35% increase in asylum decisions from the previous year which may be in part due to the increase in the number of asylum decision makers employed by the Home Office.
We are on track to clear the legacy asylum backlog by the end of 2023.
Asked by: Angela Crawley (Scottish National Party - Lanark and Hamilton East)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many and what proportion of the asylum decision makers hired in May 2023 have been fully-trained to process asylum claims to completion.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
We are increasing the productivity of caseworkers by streamlining, digitalising, and simplifying our process. We have already doubled our decision makers over the last 2 years, and we are continuing to recruit more. This will take the headcount of our expected number of decision makers to 2,500 by September 2023.
Provisional data indicates that, as of 01 May 2023, there are 1,280 full time equivalent (FTE) Asylum Decision Makers. This information is published online in the IMB_06 tab of the Statistics relating to the Illegal Migration Bill - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk). IMB_06 is not broken down in terms of how many decision makers are allocated to each Decision-Making Unit nor how many have been trained to work independently.
The latest Home Office statistics show asylum decisions are up in the year ending March 2023, with a 35% increase in asylum decisions from the previous year.
Asked by: Angela Crawley (Scottish National Party - Lanark and Hamilton East)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent estimate she has made of the number of asylum decision-makers her Department will have hired by (a) summer 2023 and (b) September 2023.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
We are increasing the productivity of caseworkers by streamlining, digitalising, and simplifying our process. We have already doubled our decision makers over the last 2 years, and we are continuing to recruit more. This will take the headcount of our expected number of decision makers to 2,500 by September 2023.
Provisional data indicates that, as of 01 May 2023, there are 1,280 full time equivalent (FTE) Asylum Decision Makers. This information is published online in the IMB_06 tab of the Statistics relating to the Illegal Migration Bill - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk). IMB_06 is not broken down in terms of how many decision makers are allocated to each Decision-Making Unit nor how many have been trained to work independently.
The latest Home Office statistics show asylum decisions are up in the year ending March 2023, with a 35% increase in asylum decisions from the previous year.
Asked by: Angela Crawley (Scottish National Party - Lanark and Hamilton East)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many asylum claims were waiting (a) between one and two years and (b) over two years for a decision to be made in May (i) 2022 and (ii) 2023.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The Home Office publishes data on asylum in the ‘Immigration System Statistics Quarterly Release’. Data on asylum applications awaiting initial decision can be found in table Asy_D03 of the ‘Asylum and resettlement detailed datasets’. Please note that data is broken down by duration awaiting decision of ‘6 months or less’ and ‘more than 6 months’. Additionally, data is published quarterly and reflect the number of people awaiting a decision as at the end of the period, rather than the total throughout the period.
Information on how to use the datasets can be found in the ‘Notes’ page of the workbooks. The latest data relate to the year ending March 2023.
Data for the year ending June 2023 is scheduled to be published on 24 August 2023. Information on future Home Office statistical release dates can be found in the ‘Research and statistics calendar’.
Alternatively, operational data on the total awaiting asylum initial decision WIP can be found in table ASY_02 of the ‘Immigration and protection data’ published as part of the ‘Migration transparency data’ release. This data includes further breakdown of duration awaiting decision (less than 3 months, 3-6 months, 6-12 months and 12 months+) and refers to applications made after 1st October 2006.
Asked by: Angela Crawley (Scottish National Party - Lanark and Hamilton East)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many emails were received by her Department in each year from 2017 from people outside the UK relating to (a) border, (b) immigration and (c) citizenship services.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The Home Office does not record the country of origin of emails nor do we categorise emails according to ‘border’, ‘immigration’ or ‘citizenship services’.
Asked by: Angela Crawley (Scottish National Party - Lanark and Hamilton East)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many priority service visas were not processed within five days in (a) 2022 and (b) 2023.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
At present there is no data available for 2022 and 2023. The Home Office expects to reintroduce this data in the next publication scheduled for 25th May 2023.
The published statistics which includes data on performance against Service Level Agreement for Standard, Priority and Super priority visas up to the end of Q3 2021 can be found in this link (Data tab VSI_02): https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1058196/UKVI_VC_Transparency_Q4_2021_Published.ods.
Asked by: Angela Crawley (Scottish National Party - Lanark and Hamilton East)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many priority service visas were processed within five days in (a) 2022 and (b) 2023.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
At present there is no data available for 2022 and 2023. The Home Office expects to reintroduce this data in the next publication scheduled for 25th May 2023.
The published statistics which includes data on performance against Service Level Agreement for Standard, Priority and Super priority visas up to the end of Q3 2021 can be found in this link (Data tab VSI_02): https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1058196/UKVI_VC_Transparency_Q4_2021_Published.ods.
Asked by: Angela Crawley (Scottish National Party - Lanark and Hamilton East)
Question to the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero:
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, how many households have received support through the Alternative Fuel Payment Scheme.
Answered by Amanda Solloway - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
The Alternative Fund for the Alternative Fuel Payment, the element which requires an application, launched recently on 6 March and early data is still being collected. Electricity suppliers, who deliver the automatic enrolment element of the scheme, recently provided MPAN-level delivery data to the Government. Transparency data will be published in due course.