Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what progress her Department has made in the last six months on providing decisions for outstanding asylum claims made in 2020; and whether targets are in place to reduce outstanding applications for (a) leave and indefinite leave to remain, (b) citizenship and (c) passports.

The Home Office are progressing decisions for outstanding asylum claims made since 2020 by investing in a programme of transformation and business improvement initiatives that will speed up and simplify our processes, reduce the time people spend in the asylum system and decrease the number of people who are awaiting an interview or decision.

We continue to develop existing and new technology to help build on improvements such as digital interviewing and are streamlining and digitising the case working process to increase the numbers of decisions made.

The Home Office has prioritised capacity to Ukraine Visa Schemes applications in response to the humanitarian crisis caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Resources are now being returned to focus on visa routes impacted by these prioritisation decisions. The Home Office continues to prioritise any urgent and compassionate cases across all visa routes.

Citizenship continues to work through cases as quickly as possible and the latest transparency data shows 98.4% of straightforward applications are decided within Service Standard.

https://gov.uk/goverment/publications/visas-and-citizenship-data-q1-2022

Since April 2021, people have been advised to allow up to 10 weeks when applying for their passport from the UK. The vast majority of people continue to receive their passport within this timeframe, with 97.7% of UK standard applications completed within 10 weeks between January and June.