Lord Rosser
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(4 years, 2 months ago)
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Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)
I was very pleased to meet my honourable friend Kevin Foster MP and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham last week to establish how people, whether they are fleeing a country because of persecution or conflict, can apply for jobs. Many of these people do not want to come here to claim benefits; they want to work. We have been discussing that with the right reverend Prelate, and those discussions will be ongoing.
Lord Rosser (Lab) [V]
The UK requires asylum seekers who wish to work and contribute to our economy to wait up to 12 months, pending their application being processed. The application process surely needs to be speeded up. The Government have said that over the past approximately 18 months, they have increased the number of decision-makers from about 350 to more than 630. By how much has the average time taken to consider asylum cases been shortened since the beginning of 2019, and what is now the target figure for the average time taken to determine asylum cases?
Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)
The noble Lord will appreciate that the past nine months have been unprecedented in terms of being able efficiently to deliver certain things, including the outcome of asylum cases. I do not have the exact figure to hand—I can get it for him—but I would imagine that that process has slowed, given the Covid-19 restrictions we have all been living under.