Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what plans she has to increase the capacity of the asylum system to (a) reduce processing times and (b) eliminate backlogs.

We are taking immediate action to speed up asylum processing whilst maintaining the integrity of the system. This includes simplifying guidance, reducing interview length and streamlining processes. The Streamlined Asylum Process plays an important role in achieving this.

We have already doubled our decision makers over the last 2 years. We are continuing to increase this further with large campaign already underway. This will take the headcount of our expected number of decision makers to 2,500 by September 2023.

The aim is to clear the initial decision backlog of asylum legacy cases by the end of 2023.