Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of including time spent awaiting an asylum decision within the five year period applicants must be in the UK before they may apply for indefinite leave to remain.

Whilst we do not have any plans to review the process by which refugees may apply for settlement protection, we have taken action to accelerate decision-making and rapidly speed up processing times to eliminate the backlog of people waiting for initial asylum decisions by the end of 2023. This will ensure asylum seekers are not left months or even years waiting for a decision.

We have done this by streamlining and modernising the end-to-end process, with improved guidance and more focussed interviews; and continued enhancement of digital technology.