Home Office staff have expressed dismay at Rishi Sunak’s promise to clear the backlog of asylum cases, and at ministers’ claims that that promise has now been fulfilled.
Officials accused the government of “putting pressure” on voters with the announcement this week, while official statistics show there are still more than 4,000 open cases.
They said it too I He used “smoke and mirrors” to clear a backlog of 92,000 “outdated” asylum applications received before June 2022, which the Prime Minister said were due to be processed by the end of 2023.
Officials fear another 94,000 applications have accumulated recently.
Officials also disputed the official explanation for the delay, saying Home Office errors and missing documentation were the reason some of the 4,537 outstanding claims were not paid.
The Home Office said the cases dealt with were “complex” and included age disputes involving asylum seekers posing as children, people with serious medical problems and people with suspected criminal records.
However, the shelter worker said that I These “serious problems” with record keeping also resulted in applications not being processed, some important documents being lost or unrecoverable, errors being made when loading ID cards into the Home Office system, and legal advice for some countries of origin being missing.
“They have simplified the processes for processing most cases, but some of them are still not feasible,” the official said.
They accused the government of “pressuring” the public over its past claims that it had cleared the backlog, and said officials were always told that all cases had to be resolved to fulfill the promise.
On Tuesday, Home Secretary James Cleverley stressed that the government was only committed to “processing” the applications.
“We had a responsibility to make sure they were all dealt with and that’s what we did,” he told the BBC.
However, an internal Interior Ministry email was sent and reviewed to officials on Tuesday. I simply states that all cases in the old portfolio are “considered.” It said 86,800 cases had been decided in the past, significantly less than the 92,000 cases remaining pending when the prime minister made his promise.
When he made the pledge in December 2022, Sunak said he would “clear the backlog of original asylum decisions by the end of next year,” while former immigration minister Robert Jenrick told parliament: “The backlog of previous decisions will be cleared.”
I has since reviewed 20 ministerial applications from the old queue, and none of them stated that the obligation was limited to only “processing” applications.
At a Home Affairs Committee hearing in June, then Home Secretary Suella Braverman told MPs the backlog related to “decisions” seven times.
Home Office data shows that almost a third of asylum applications processed last year were not fully resolved and were instead “withdrawn” and removed from the system.
Officials have already admitted they have failed to prosecute more than 17,000 asylum seekers with withdrawn claims after the people were evicted from Home Office premises and lost their legal right to live there.
This was reported by a source in the Ministry of Internal Affairs. I that the tactic was “all noise and mirrors” and that the vast majority of people whose applications were withdrawn are believed to have disappeared within the UK.
The official said that anyone who “reappears” could potentially re-enter the asylum system, increasing the backlog of applications, and that a large number of appeals of rejected applications are expected.
There are also concerns that as backlogs are resolved, lawsuits could arise over changes to the asylum process. These include shorter interviews, the introduction of English-only questionnaires and a new “simplified assessment process”.
The Prime Minister’s pledge led to the recruitment of 1,200 new asylum officers and a reallocation of Home Office resources away from other tasks.
Yesterday an internal email from Home Office director George Shirley to officials hinted at the cost of clearing the backlog.
“This achievement marked a year of change, commitment and innovation,” the email said. “This has meant intensifying a number of activities and opportunities while maintaining focus on our goals…there is still a lot of work and challenges ahead.”
A National Audit report into the Home Office’s asylum transformation program, published last year, warned that Mr Sunak’s pledge had crowded out previous targets and that “pressures to set short-term priorities are making it difficult to move to a longer-term strategy.”
The charity Care4Calais said the tactics used had left thousands of asylum seekers “without a livelihood” and resulted in many applications being “wrongfully withdrawn due to government failures”.
Chief executive Steve Smith added: “The government’s attempts to ‘manage the books’ have failed, whether by withdrawing 17,000 asylum claims or classifying 4,500 cases as ‘complex’.
“They decided to create a so-called ‘legacy reserve’ to set a policy target, but this has not been achieved while the actual total number of orders continues to rise.”
Mark Serwotka, general secretary of civil servants’ union PCS, said the only way to reduce the “unacceptable” backlog of asylum claims is to “adequately train and pay Home Office staff so they can do their jobs effectively and humanely.”
“To create a humane and functioning asylum system, our members need the time, space and resources to do their jobs well, free from political pressure and a government that makes headlines and wages a culture war.”
The Ministry of Internal Affairs was contacted for comments. The prime minister’s spokesman told reporters on Tuesday: “We are committed to closing the gap, the government has done that.”
“We are very transparent about what this means. We have addressed all of these issues and have actually gone beyond our original commitments. In total, we made about 112,000 decisions.
“As a result of this process, there is a small minority of cases that are complex and require further work due to our strict standards.
“However, Home Office officials have gone to great lengths to process such a large volume of paperwork in a short period of time, while maintaining our strict security standards.”
Source: I News
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