The range of media and political responses to the government’s plans to reduce the asylum backlog by replacing some interviews with questionnaires – in English – is striking. For most, the aim is a good one. But sceptics believe it may lead to people getting permission to stay in the UK without their asylum claim being properly examined. At the other end of the spectrum, it’s seen as an asylum crackdown, with people subjected to a process that fails to see the “face behind the case”.
One thing that is clear is that the current asylum backlog is untenable. Ali, a claimant who escaped religious persecution and arrived in the UK in summer 2021, has now spent more than 18 months in a hotel. “To be honest, being in the asylum process is like being in a prison, just without walls,” he says. “It’s like being in limbo, and while you can’t make decisions about your future, that makes you depressed.”
Statistics published on Thursday show that Ali is one of far too many men, women and children – more than 160,000 now – who are having to wait months and years for the Home Office to make a decision on their asylum claim. Two in three have been waiting for longer than six months; a third have been waiting between one and three years; and around 10,000 between three and five years.
Addressing the backlog should be a priority for the government, and that’s why the Refugee Council welcomes the commitment Rishi Sunak made last December that at least part of the backlog – the 92,000 claims that had been made before the government’s latest asylum legislation, the Nationality and Borders Act, came into force at the end of June last year – would be cleared by the end of this year.
Given the Home Office has only been making around 18,000 decisions each year, to fulfil this commitment will require some very different ways of working. We have been calling for a simpler process for those people who, because of the countries they’re from, will almost certainly receive a positive decision on their claim. People from places like Afghanistan and Syria.
And so, on the face of it, the government’s announcement that people from five countries with grant rates of 95% and over won’t have to go through the normal lengthy asylum process should be a good thing.
But we’re deeply concerned that the government risks doing the right thing in the wrong way. Instead of working with people to help them provide the information needed to make a decision, the Home Office is asking them to respond to a lengthy questionnaire that is only available in English and has to be completed in the same – and with a deadline of just four weeks. If anyone doesn’t return the questionnaire, then there’s a threat that the Home Office will consider their asylum claim to have been withdrawn. If that happens, they’ll lose their entitlement to housing and financial support – and be at even greater risk of exploitation and destitution.
Ali is well aware of this. “Most asylum seekers, their English level is not good enough to fill this paper in. If they want help from someone else they will charge them, and asylum seekers are not allowed to work. These kinds of small problems, they will gather together to make a big problem,” he says.
So faster, more efficient, processes are vital if the prime minister is going to meet his commitment on the backlog. But doing it in this way, and at the scale proposed, won’t get him there. If it’s done badly, all that will happen is that people will re-enter the system at a later date at untold human cost.
At best, the current plans will see about 12,000 people go through the new process. It could make a huge difference – and allow people to finally get on with their lives. But that’s going to leave the prime minister with another 80,000 cases that still need to be dealt with this year. Making faster grants for the thousands of unaccompanied children and focusing on the roughly 10,000 people who have been waiting for more than three years should be urgent next steps.
And the backlog can’t be allowed to grow again. The UN refugee agency has set out clear ways for how better triaging right at the start of the asylum process can lead to better use of Home Office resources.
As it can with any public service, the government can decide if it wants the asylum system to be efficient, effective and high quality – or if it wants to neglect the system and leave it to crumble in mismanagement. The asylum system can and should be run well. It’s essential the government gets this right now – for Ali, for the taxpayer and for the sake of public trust.
Enver Solomon is chief executive of the Refugee Council
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