Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the potential effect of the Statement of Changes in Immigration Rules tabled on 16 March 2015, HC1116, on the number of applications made by Syrian nationals for asylum in the UK.

An analysis of asylum claims made by Syrian nationals, in the eighteen month period ending November 2014, showed some Syrian asylum claimants were found to have abused the UK’s transit without visa provisions using a US issued visa. Applicants used their US visas to arrive in the UK to claim asylum rather than to transit to an onward destination as the provisions intend. The change made by HC1116 will stop this abuse.