Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent assessment her Department has made of the impact of preliminary information questionnaires on the asylum decision backlog.

In order to reduce the legacy asylum decision backlog, questionnaires have been sent to legacy claimants from Afghanistan, Eritrea, Libya, Syria and Yemen as part of the Streamlined Asylum Process.

Questionnaires will also be sent to legacy claimants from Iran and Iraq who make up the highest volume of claimants within the legacy backlog allowing them to provide further information about their asylum claims after their initial screening interview upon arrival.

If a claimant has returned a questionnaire, it will be used to aid the decision maker to conduct a targeted or shorter interview, in turn reducing the duration of interviews, resulting in more efficient decision-making. We will closely review the use of questionnaires.

We understand that people may want to seek legal advice in order to complete the questionnaire and all asylum seekers have access to support through Legal Aid. We consider that the questionnaire can be completed without legal advice because we will contact the claimant or invite them to a personal interview should we require further information. We will not withdraw someone’s asylum claim for failure to return the questionnaire alone.