Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to the report on Asylum accommodation and support published by the National Audit Office in July 2020, what estimate her Department has made of the potential number of asylum applications up to April 2022.

The Home Office project a range of possible asylum applications for operational and financial planning which take into account past variance and upcoming system changes.

These are subject to high levels of uncertainty due to the complex and unpredictable drivers of migration and the emerging impacts of Covid on migration patterns.

The Department have estimated that asylum applications for the period from April 2020 to March 2021 could total between 26000 and 30000, and from April 2021 to March 2022 could total between 30000 and 38000, though actual numbers of applications could fall outside these ranges.

The Home Office are taking steps to reform the asylum system by developing an asylum transformation programme that seeks to simplify, streamline and digitise processes as part of the plans to speed up asylum decision making.