Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to Prime Minister's Answer to the hon. Member for Halton during his oral statement on Illegal Immigration on 13 December 2022, Official Report, column 902, what the evidential basis was for saying that the initial asylum backlog is approximately 117,000.

The Home Office records information relating to asylum applications on case working systems. Information derived from these systems – including data on the number of asylum cases awaiting an initial decision – are published in the quarterly Immigration Statistics. The latest data show that there were 117,400 applications awaiting an initial decision at the end of September 2022.

The underlying data can be found in table Asy_D03 of the ‘asylum and resettlement detailed datasets’. Information on how to use the datasets can be found in the ‘Notes’ page of the workbooks. Please note, the data show a snapshot as at the last day of each quarter, rather than the number of asylum applications awaiting a decision over the entire quarter. Additional information can be found in the User Guide to: Immigration Statistics.