Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will take steps to hire additional staff to process outstanding asylum claims in 2022.

The Home Office is working at pace to reduce the number of outstanding asylum claims. The Asylum Transformation programme aims to bring the system back into balance and modernise it, focussing on increasing productivity by streamlining, simplifying and digitalising processes, speeding up decision making and increasing efficiency and output. We are increasing the use of technology, improving screening to capture more information as early as possible, and introducing accelerated decision-making procedures, including shorter interviews and decision templates. A recruitment strategy is in place, with the aim of increasing staffing and decisions.