Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department will take to tackle long processing times for applications for asylum.

To help reduce the amount of time it takes to process asylum applications we are 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.

These initiatives include conducting shorter, more focused interviews or omitting interviews where it is appropriate to do so, streamlining decision templates and focusing on improving quality to ensure decisions are right first time. We have introduced specialist Decision Making Units, providing greater ownership and management of cohorts of asylum cases. Additionally, we have extensive ongoing recruitment and training plans in place, including career progression options that will aid the retention of staff.

We are continuing to develop existing and new technology to help build on recent improvements, such as digital interviewing and moving away from a paper-based system. We are streamlining and digitising the case working process to enable more effective workflow, appointment booking and decision-making.