Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will make an assessment of the reasons for the rise in the number of asylum applications in the last 12 momths that have failed to receive a decision within six months.

The Home Office has, for 39 months, met its Service Standard to make decisions on 98% of straight forward asylum claims within six months.

Notwithstanding this, we are aware that the number of older cases awaiting decision is increasing. As noted by the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration in his recent report on Asylum Intake and Casework, this is partly caused by issues relating to staff retention. We recruit high quality and highly skilled people to be asylum caseworkers and they are able to progress their careers quite quickly. However, plans are in place to address this and to reduce the number of older cases awaiting a decision.