Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 9 June 2023 to Question 186690 on Asylum: Interviews, what steps she is taking to monitor (a) progress in the Streamlined Asylum Process and (b) the accuracy of the forecast budget.

The commitment made by the Prime Minister on 13 December 2022 is to clear the backlog of legacy initial asylum decisions relating to claims made before 28 June 2022, by the end of 2023.

We are taking immediate action to speed up asylum processing whilst maintaining the integrity of the system. This includes simplifying guidance, reducing interview length and streamlining processes. The Streamlined Asylum Process plays an important role in achieving this.

We have already doubled our decision makers over the last 2 years. We are continuing to increase this further with large campaign already underway. This will take the headcount of our expected number of decision makers to 2,500 by September 2023.

The aim is to clear the initial decision backlog of asylum legacy cases by the end of 2023.