Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department plans to take to clear the backlog of asylum applications.

We have taken immediate action to speed up asylum processing whilst maintaining the integrity of the system. This includes simplifying guidance, reducing interview length and streamlining processes.

We have more than doubled our decision makers over the last 2 years, and we are continuing to recruit more. This will take the headcount of our expected number of decision makers to 2,500 by September 2023.

The latest Home Office statistics show asylum decisions are up in the year ending March 2023, with a 35% increase in asylum decisions from the previous year.