Question to the Home Office:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the appropriateness of the use of the Detained Fast Track process in Sudanese asylum cases.

The Detained Fast Track (DFT) and the Detained Non-Suspensive Appeals (DNSA) processes exist to deal with applications for asylum that appear, after screening, to be ones where a particularly quick decision can be made. Entry to the Detained Fast Track procedure is determined by reference to published policy available on the Gov.uk website.

The policy neither requires nor excludes applications based on the nationality or country of origin of the claimants. There is a general presumption that the majority of asylum applications are ones on which a quick decision may be made, unless there is evidence to suggest otherwise. The system operates flexibly and in cases where it becomes apparent that an application is more complicated and cannot be determined within the DFT/DNSA indicative time-scale, the case is taken out of the process and the claimant normally released from detention.