Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what estimate she has made of the average cost of processing an adult male asylum seeker in the UK under existing arrangements; and if she will publish a breakdown of that cost.

The Home Office are unable to provide the average cost of processing an adult male asylum seeker in the UK under existing arrangements as this information is not published or held in a reportable format.

The Home Office do publish as part of their published Transparency release the total asylum costs at Asy_04: Migration transparency data - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).

These costs include the managing asylum operations claim including the costs associated with deciding a case (screening, interviews and issuing a decision), managing any related appeal, the cost of all asylum support (Section 4, Section 95 and Section 98), detention costs where detention has been used and enforcement costs (escorting and assisted voluntary returns). Also included are the costs of department staff and buildings and the proportionate costs of the Home Office building and managerial costs.