Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of staffing levels in the Home Office for the processing in a timely manner of applications for support under section 4 of the Asylum and Immigration Act 1999.

The Home Office recognises the importance of ensuring that we have sufficient appropriately trained staff to assess asylum support applications and to meet our customers’ priority needs. The Home Office has rolling recruitment campaigns to ensure the number of staff are maintained at a level that allows cases to be processed.