Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she has made an assessment of the potential merits of online remote asylum interviews.

The Home Office takes the wellbeing of asylum seekers extremely seriously and has already put in place a range of measures to support asylum applicants affected by the covid-19 outbreak.

However, it is crucial to our applicants that we restart processing their applications for protection as soon as it is safe to do so. The Home Office has successfully used video technology to support remote interviewing for more than 2 years and has appropriate operating procedures that are designed to ensure participants are able to give the best account of their circumstances.

To keep people safe but allow the Home Office to gather the additional information needed to make a decision on their claim for protection, Asylum Operations have secured additional mobile digital and video interviewing kit that enables more applicants to be interviewed remotely.

The Home Office has been clear that it would not restart interviews until it is safe to do so. We are now in a position where we can ensure safe social distancing and have started to issue interview invitations with an expectation that interviews volumes will increase over the coming weeks, including those taking place face to face.