Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to ensure that decisions on asylum claims are made within 12 months of the date of the application.

The Home Office is committed to ensuring asylum claims are considered without unnecessary delay. We have already made significant progress in prioritising claims with acute vulnerability and those in receipt of the greatest level of support, including Unaccompanied Asylum-Seeking Children. Additionally, we are prioritising older claims and those where an individual has already received a decision, but a reconsideration is required.

The Home Office are pursuing a programme of transformation and business improvement initiatives which will speed up decision making, reduce the time people spend in the system and reduce the numbers who are awaiting an interview or decision. This includes almost doubling decision makers number to c.1,000 and providing improved training and career progression opportunities to aid retention of staff. This investment in our people will speed up processing times and increase the throughput of asylum decisions.

We are continuing to develop existing and new technology to help build on recent improvements such as digital interviewing and move away from a paper-based system. We have three key areas of focus in the short to medium term to reduce the number of outstanding asylum cases by improving efficiency and productivity, reducing the number of outstanding claims and building high performing teams.

We are streamlining and digitalising the case working process to enable more effective workflow, appointment booking and decision-making. We have recently appointed a new lead who is responsible for creating a new enhanced and enlarged workflow function for Asylum Operations. This will allow Asylum Operations a greater degree of management and control over the flow of cases to our decision-making units.