Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government whether staff newly recruited to conduct asylum interviews and make decisions on individual cases have been equipped with sufficient (1) training, and (2) experience, of the asylum system.

We have implemented a recruitment and retention allowance helping us to maintain experienced asylum decision-makers. The Home Office have also developed an asylum academy to reduce the time to competence. We will continue to monitor and review this and its impact on attrition and attraction.

We are also building high performing teams, increasing the number of decision-makers and providing improved training and career progression opportunities to aid retention of staff.

We have a comprehensive training programme and mentoring framework in place to support new and existing decision makers which is delivered by a dedicated team of technical experts.