Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, when his Department plans to resume asylum interviews or allow for the majority of those interviews to take place remotely during the covid-19 outbreak.

The Home Office takes the wellbeing of asylum seekers extremely seriously and has already put in place a range of measures to support asylum seekers affected by the covid-19 outbreak. In line with the Home Office’s commitment to protect the health and wellbeing of its staff and customers as a top priority, Asylum Operations made the decision to cease face to face substantive asylum interviews with effect from Thursday 19^th March 2020.

This meant that a small number of interviews were cancelled, and no interviews have been scheduled since this date. It is not possible to say how many interviews would have taken place had the pandemic not occurred.

Asylum Operations have secured a mobile digital and video interviewing solution to support remote interviewing and are working with delivery partners, to enable the use of this technology. We remain committed to restarting substantive asylum interviews as soon we can establish a process that allows the participants - applicants, representatives, interpreters and interviewers - to do so safely.