Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what proportion of asylum claims are decided within the Home Office’s service standard that 98 per cent of straightforward claims will be decided within 6 months.

In line with our ambition to promote a greater understanding and transparency of the asylum system and to develop service standards that are meaningful and command confidence, plans are underway for UKVI to implement new service standards for asylum case working. This change means UKVI have moved away from the six-month service standard for straightforward cases which was introduced in 2014.

It had become clear that the service standard no longer best served those that used our services and a number of stakeholders had been concerned that not all cases were captured by it.

The intention is for this approach to bring balance back to the asylum system while steps are taken to increase the capacity of the asylum decision making system and focus on process improvements to deliver better quality decisions more efficiently.

Data on the proportion of asylum claims that are decided within the Home Office’s previous service standard, which was to decide 98 per cent of straight-forward claims within 6 months can be found at Asy_10: Percentage of Asy-lum applications processed within 6 months, Asylum Transparency data February 2019: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/asylum-transparency-data-february-2019