Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to recommendation 1 of the policy paper entitled The Home Office response to the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration’s report: An inspection of asylum casework (August 2020 to May 2021), published 18 November 2021, when she plans to publish a service standard.

Reducing the backlog in asylum cases and establishing a more efficient and robust decision-making system is not in and of itself a strategy to stop illegal migration, but it is important for taxpayer value and we have prioritised it. We have transformed the productivity of asylum decision making by streamlining processes, creating focused interviews and instilling true accountability for performance. As of 1 September, we have met our commitment to have 2,500 decision makers, an increase of 174% from the same point last year. As a result, I am pleased to report to the House that we are on track to clear the legacy backlog by the end of the year, and that recently published provisional figures for July show that the overall backlog fell.

On 13 December 2022, the Prime Minister pledged to clear the backlog of the 92,601 initial asylum decisions relating to claims made before 28 June 2022 (“legacy claims”) by the end of 2023.

We have taken immediate action to accelerate decision-making and rapidly speed up processing times by streamlining guidance, accelerating decision-making procedures, including more focused and fewer interviews, as well as enhancing the use of technology.