In addition to his “Stop the boats” pledge, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has made a commitment to clear the backlog of asylum claims. The backlog is defined as claims made before 28 June 2022 that have yet to receive a decision. Mr. Sunak aims to “abolish” the backlog by the end of 2023. However, this is going to be a busy period for Home Office officials as they work to process the remaining cases before the end of the year.
Despite progress being made in reducing the backlog, it is expected that more people will be given asylum this year than in any other year on record. While many claims have been withdrawn by the government, some officials are concerned that the backlog will be difficult to clear completely by the end of 2023. Nonetheless, the number of asylum caseworker staff has almost doubled since December 2022, and they have been working overtime and weekends to process claims.
Between July and September 2023, a record proportion of asylum seekers were granted asylum. This is partly due to people from Afghanistan, Eritrea, Libya, Syria, and Yemen being asked to fill out a questionnaire instead of having face-to-face interviews – 95% of applicants from those countries are usually granted asylum anyway. Another way the backlog is decreasing is through the number of claims being withdrawn. Withdrawals include “implicit withdrawals,” where the Home Office chooses to withdraw the claim.
Some lawyers have questioned the criteria under which an asylum claim can be implicitly withdrawn, suggesting that the Home Office is pushing people to miss appointments so that their claims can be marked as withdrawn. This comes after Conservative MP Tim Loughton raised concerns about the high number of withdrawals. The Home Office later revealed that a technical error had led to a large number of withdrawals being mislabelled, and that the figures will be rectified in future publications
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