Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what circumstances relating to the covid-19 pandemic have caused delays in her Department processing asylum and indefinite leave to remain applications; and what steps she is taking to mitigate those delays.

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, customers in the UK were unable to attend their substantive asylum interviews and asylum operations made the decision to cease these on 19 March 2020 in line with government guidance.

In response, Asylum Operations secured a mobile digital and video interviewing solution to support remote interviewing and restarted remote video interviewing for adults from 17 July 2020 and on 21 September 2020 recommenced with face to face substantive interviews for adults. On the same date, we also commenced remote video interviewing for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UASC). We are also able to offer in person interviews for UASC should they be required.

Asylum Operations were able to continue to make decisions on asylum applications during this time but were unable to serve these due to government guidance to ‘stay at home’ as the operations relied on the postal service to deliver these causing delays. The department have since agreed a process to enable the service of decisions via email and post which has been shared through the Immigration Law Practitioners Association (ILPA) and the Law Society. Asylum Operations is now working to deliver on recovery plans to return interviewing and decisions to pre-COVID-19 levels.

Asylum in the UK should continue to be sought at the first available opportunity, however for those who have failed to claim on arrival, or whose circumstances have changed since arrival, claims are usually registered in Croydon, but appointments were limited due to restrictive measures. The Home Office have temporarily introduced additional locations to register claims across the UK.

In relation to Indefinite Leave to Remain applications, in response to the Covid-19 pandemic and government and public health restrictions put in place, the UK Visa and Citizenship Application Service (UKVCAS), which allows customers within the UK to enrol their biometrics, was suspended from the end of March to 1 June 2020.

As the UKVCAS service reopened, in parallel UKVI began reusing existing fingerprint biometrics for some customers which meant that instead of attending a service point in person to re-enrol, UKVI could reuse the fingerprints already recorded against a previous application.

Once a customer has submitted their biometrics to UKVI, either through a physical appointment or verifying their identity in order that their existing biometrics can be reused, UKVI is able to make a decision. UKVI are processing decisions as quickly as possible.