Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what information her Department holds on whether people claim to be from Eritrea to improve their chances of asylum being granted.

The Home Office is committed to ensuring that the asylum system is not open to abuse. All asylum claimants are subject to mandatory security checks to confirm their identity and to link it to their biometric details for the purpose of immigration, security and criminality checks. These checks are critical to the delivery of a safe and secure immigration system.

The Home Office uses several processes and tools to identify a claimant’s nationality and other identity features including fingerprint and other systems, identity documents, language analysis, and asylum interviews.

For further information regarding security checks during the asylum screening process, please see https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/asylum-screening-and-routing/asylum-screening-and-routing-accessible.

The guidance for doubtful or disputed nationality can be found here: Doubtful and disputed nationality cases: caseworker guidance - GOV.UK.