Asylum Seekers

Lord Coaker Excerpts

Tuesday 17th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

I am afraid that I must disagree with the noble Lord. It is clear that one of the major pull factors for people crossing the channel is that they hope to work in Britain. Legally allowing people to work would increase the pull factors for them to embark on dangerous and illegal journeys across the channel.

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

My Lords, time after time, we hear the Minister try to explain away the chaos of the Government’s asylum policy. Time after time, new legislation is announced, chasing headlines. Time after time, the Chamber hears the appalling asylum case figures, with the shocking human consequences, as we have just heard again today. I will ask about one example: when will the doubling of asylum caseworkers to 2,500, as briefed by the Prime Minister last year, happen? Yesterday, the Minister could not confirm that the recruitment of those caseworkers had even started. It is a shambles, is it not?

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

The Home Office currently employs about 1,280 asylum decision-makers and will double the number of caseworkers to help to clear the asylum backlog by the end of next year. Recruitment and retention strategies are in place, with the aim of increasing staffing, reducing the output in the number of cases awaiting a decision and increasing outputs of decisions. We have increased the number of asylum caseworkers by 112%, from 597 staff in 2019-20. We will recruit more decision-makers, which will take our expected number of decision-makers to 1,800 by summer 2023 and to 2,500 by September. We have implemented a recruitment and retention allowance, which has reduced decision-maker attrition rates by 30%, helping us to retain experienced asylum decision-makers.