Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that it meet its targets for the time taken to make decisions on applications for asylum.

The Home Office has a Service Standard to make an initial asylum decision on straightforward claims within 182 days of the date of claim however we are aware of the number of older cases in the system. These are more complex cases which generally have barriers that prevent an initial asylum decision being made. These barriers are often varied and require time to clear.

However, the Home Office has plans to improve the speed at which outstanding asylum claims are decided. These include rolling recruitment campaigns to maintain decision maker levels, a staff retention strategy to ensure it retains its highly skilled asylum decision makers, and the further expansion of digital processes to increase case working flexibility.

Information regarding Asylum data is published as part of the Government’s Transparency agenda the latest release of which can be found on Table Asy_11 and can be found at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/asylum-transparency-data-may-2018