Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what was the average waiting time for asylum applicants to receive an interview in each of the last 12 months.

The Home Office is unable to state what the average waiting time is for an asylum interview in each of the last 12 months because this information is not held in a reportable format, not routinely published and could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.

However, the Home Office does publish data on the number asylum applications awaiting an initial decision by duration, for main applicants only. This data can be found at Asy_04 of the published Immigration Statistics: List of tables - GOV.UK (List of tables - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).