Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many asylum decision maker posts are currently vacant.

Asylum Operations has over recent years made good progress on increasing the number of decision makers and support staff. There are recruitment strategies in place to maintain staffing at the required levels to allow us to manage asylum intake and reduce the overall time to make initial asylum decisions. These include rolling recruitment campaigns, a staff retention strategy to ensure it retains its highly skilled asylum decision makers, and the further expansion of digital processes to increase case working flexibility. Recruitment has however been impacted by COVID-19, we are working to return staffing numbers back to pre-pandemic levels as soon as possible and with campaigns due to go live imminently.