Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 11 July 2023 to Question 192551 on Asylum: Applications, how many asylum application decision-makers were employed on (a) 12 July 2023 and (b) 12 July 2021.

We have more than doubled our decision makers over the last 2 years, and we are continuing to recruit more. This will take the headcount of our expected number of decision makers to 2,500 by September 2023.

As of 01 May 2023, there are 1,280 full time equivalent (FTE) Asylum Decision Makers. This information is published online: Statistics relating to the Illegal Migration Bill - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk). Please note that this data is provisional and includes the number of asylum decision makers employed from the beginning of each month from August 2019 – May 2023.

Finalised data for April to June 2023 is due to be published on 24 August 2023 in the Migration Transparency release (Immigration and Protection table, Asy_05(M)).