Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to tackle the asylum case backlog.

Mr Speaker, this government inherited an asylum system in crisis, with decision-making on cases at its lowest level for years, £8 million per day being spent on asylum hotels, and a £6 billion in-year overspend on asylum and illegal migration costs.

We have increased asylum decision-making, stepped up returns of failed asylum-seekers, and combined with the ending of the Rwanda partnership, committed in the Budget to reduce costs by £4 billion over the next two years. We cannot fix the system we inherited overnight, but we are working flat out towards that goal.