Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, for what reason there are no service standards for the processing of asylum applications.

Until October 2018, there was a published service standard in place to decide 98% of straight-forward cases within six months from date of claim. Whilst the operation consistently achieved this for three years, the number of non-straight forward cases awaiting a decision grew rapidly and it became clear that the former service standard no longer best served those that used our services. For these reasons, former Ministers agreed that we should move away from the service standard to reprioritise cases, whilst we come to longer term arrangement for service standards that meet the needs of all parties.

As a result, we moved away from the 6-month service standard to concentrate on older claims, cases with acute vulnerability and those in receipt of the greatest level of support, including Unaccompanied Asylum-Seeking Children (UASC). Additionally, we are prioritising cases where an individual has al-ready received a decision, but a reconsideration is required. This prioritisation has been successful as we made 3,114 decisions on claims from UASC in the year ended December 2019, a 45% increase on the previous year.

For the year 2020, we continue to prioritise claims in the same way, including UASCs, however there have been some operational challenges resulting from the COVID-19 outbreak that has impacted our decision making across all claims. We are continuing to formulate plans on a new service standard for all asylum claims, which should provide asylum seekers and partners with clear expectation of how and when a decision should be made. The Home Office does however continue to publish information on the total number of cases awaiting an initial decision broken down by specific periods of time. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/immigration-protection-data-august-2020 (Asy_02)