Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many Afghan nationals living in the UK are awaiting a decision on asylum applications as at 16 September 2021; and what steps she is taking to help ensure that applicants are responded to as quickly as possible.

The Home Office publishes data on how many Afghan nationals are awaiting an initial asylum decision, but only up to and including June 2021. This data can be found at Asy_01c of the published Immigration Statistics:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/immigration-statistics-year-ending-june-2021/list-of-tables#asylum-and-resettlement

The Home Office are pursuing a programme of transformation and business improvement initiatives which will speed up decision making, reduce the time people spend in the system and reduce the numbers who are awaiting an interview or decision. This includes almost doubling decision makers number to c.1,000 by March 2022 and providing improved training and career progression opportunities to aid retention of staff.

We are continuing to develop existing and new technology to help build on recent improvements such as digital interviewing and move away from a paper-based system. We have three key areas of focus in the short to medium term to reduce the number of outstanding asylum cases by improving efficiency and productivity, reducing the number of outstanding claims and building high performing teams. We are streamlining and digitalising the case working process to enable more effective workflow, appointment booking and decision-making.