Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many asylum seekers in the UK are waiting to be called to their substantive asylum interview, having completed their initial screening interview as at 27 October 2021; and what that figure was (a) one and (b) two years ago.

The Home Office is unable to state how many asylum seekers in the UK are waiting to be called to their substantive interview, having completed their initial screening interview as at 27 October or one and two years ago as this information is not held in a publishable format and to gather it would incur disproportionate cost..

The Home Office publishes data on the number asylum applications awaiting an initial decision by duration, for main applicants only. This data can be found at Asy_04 of the published Immigration Statistics:

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