Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether he is taking steps to increase the (a) speed and (b) quality of (i) visa and (ii) asylum application decision-making for applications made by people from Iran.

All Visa and asylum claims are considered on a case-by-case basis and in line with published policy.

In respect of overseas visa applications, UK Visas and Immigration operate within both global customer service standards and global decision quality practices for all of its customers who make an entry clearance application from overseas. Details of current performance against these customer service standards:

Latest processing times: Global average processing times for applications made outside the UK:

Visa decision waiting times: applications outside the UK - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Latest processing times: Global average processing times for applications made inside the UK

Visa decision waiting times: applications inside the UK - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Asylum Claims by Iranian nationals will be considered in the same way as claims from any other nationality.

We are taking immediate action to rapidly speed up processing times and eliminate the backlog of people waiting for initial asylum decisions by the end of 2023.

To further accelerate decision making we will drive productivity improvements by simplifying and modernising our system. This includes measures like shorter, more focussed interviews; removing unnecessary interviews; making guidance simpler and more accessible; dealing with cases more swiftly where they can be certified as manifestly unfounded; recruiting extra decision makers; and allocating dedicated resources for different nationalities