Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what was the average time taken to process asylum applications in May (a) 2022 and (b) 2023.

The Home Office is unable to state the average time taken to process asylum claims because this information is not held in a reportable format, not routinely published, and could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.

However, the Home Office does publish data regarding asylum claims awaiting an initial decision by duration as at the end of March 2022 and 2023, for main claimant only. This data can be found at Asy_04 of the Asylum and Resettlement Summary Tables:

List of tables - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)