Asylum claims: National Audit Office finds government a ‘long way’ from meeting targets

A government watchdog has said the government may miss its target of clearing the backlog of older asylum cases by the end of this year.

The National Audit Office questioned whether the plan was sustainable, and was putting pressure on other parts of the immigration system - meaning the Home Office was a “long way from meeting its ambitions”. Labour said ministers had “lost control” of the asylum system.

What is the government’s asylum target?

In December last year, Rishi Sunak said he wanted to significantly speed up the time it took to deal with so-called “legacy” asylum applications. These are cases that have been in the system since the end of June 2022 when immigration laws were changed, raising the bar for a claim to be successful.

The Prime Minister said reform was necessary to reduce the amount of money the government was spending putting asylum seekers up in hotels. He told the Commons: “we need to process claims in days or weeks, not months or years. So we will double the number of asylum caseworkers. And we are radically re-engineering the end-to-end process, with shorter guidance, fewer interviews, less paperwork and introducing specialist case workers by nationality”.

“As a result of all these changes, we will triple the productivity of our caseworkers, and we expect to abolish the backlog of initial asylum decisions by the end of (2023)”.

Is the target on track?

According to the National Audit Office (NAO), the backlog of these “legacy” cases has fallen from more than 100,000 in July 2022 to about 77,000 by April this year.

But it said:

• To clear that backlog by the end of 2023, 2,200 decisions would need to be taken every week

• In April, just 1,130 weekly decisions were made

• Because older claims are being prioritised, the backlog of “newer” asylum claims is growing - and is expected to rise to around 84,000 by the end of the year

• In total, at the end of March 2023, 173,000 people were still waiting for an initial asylum decision

What other issues have there been?

The NAO said the business case for the Home Office’s reforms was “based on a range of highly uncertain assumptions”.

It added that some of the department’s senior staff had also raised concerns about the pressure they felt to “deliver on short-term political priorities” - which made it harder to “focus on the longer-term strategy”.

The head of the NAO Gareth Davies said: “To date, the programme is not on track to achieve the expected benefits”.

“The changes the Home Office plans to implement through the programme are necessary, but not on their own sufficient, to address the pressures in the asylum system”.

“To achieve value for money, the Home Office needs to better co-ordinate and manage the impacts of these changes, otherwise the department risks moving backlogs and cost pressures to other parts of the system – including local authorities – rather than resolving them”.

How has the government responded?

A Home Office spokesman said: “The government is working non-stop to reduce the asylum backlog and deliver cheaper, more orderly alternatives to hotel accommodation”.

“As the NAO acknowledges, we have already doubled the number of caseworkers and cut the legacy backlog by 20%, but we know more must be done to bring the asylum system back into balance”.

“The Illegal Migration Bill will stop the boats by detaining those who come to the UK illegally, and swiftly returning them to their home country or a safe third country”.

What has Labour said?

Shadow Immigration Minister Stephen Kinnock said: “The Conservatives have lost control of the asylum backlog, which has risen from 19,000 in 2010 to an astonishing 172,000 today at an astronomical cost to the taxpayer”.

“Today’s report shows that the cost of the asylum system last year was even greater than previously reported – almost doubling to an astonishing £3.6 billion”.

“The NAO is right to highlight that the actual backlog is likely to see an influx of another 23,000 claims by December”.