Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent steps she has taken to improve the efficiency of the asylum system.

The Home Office have a number of Asylum Improvement projects underway. We are reviewing asylum processes to provide a better experience for our customers such as moving administrative tasks from the asylum interview into the screening process or revising decision letters to make them more user-friendly for customers.

We are also implementing a number of pilot initiatives to modernise our case working processes including exploring the use of Summary Notes within our asylum interviews. At the same time we are looking to invest in technology to automatically obtain a transcript of an asylum interview. This should improve the efficiency of our interviewing process and reduce the need for our customers to have lengthy interviews regarding their claim whilst we are also looking to expand on the use of video conferencing equipment to build greater flexibility into the asylum case working process and to realise potential savings. We are seeking to digitalise our work where possible, removing the need for paper-based files so our work can be moved around the country to meet service demands.

We have also made improvements to our decision making processing times. We aim to decide all straightforward asylum claims within six months. We recognise that asylum cases are often complex and require our full and thorough consideration, meaning that some decisions will take longer than six months. Those cases that do take longer than six months are actively managed to ensure they are concluded as promptly as possible.

We have significantly improved our suite of guidance on considering asylum claims, including key instructions on asylum interviews and assessing credibility. We have streamlined processes by reducing the volume of paperwork required and cutting duplication in the asylum process, including improvements to the way in which decisions are explained to applicants in correspondence to make it easier to understand. These changes are designed to support caseworkers to improve decision quality and efficiency to ensure we grant protection where it is needed whilst refusing unfounded claims more quickly, whilst also ensuring a more customer focused approach.