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The government will fail to meet its asylum backlog target without a drastic increase in the processing of applications, a Sky News analysis has found.

At present, there are more than 136,000 asylum applications waiting for an initial decision, including 62,000 that were made before 28 June 2022 – the so-called “legacy backlog”.

In December Rishi Sunak pledged to clear the legacy backlog by the end of 2023. Since then, however, the Home Office has processed just 936 such cases per week.

If the prime minister is to meet his target of clearing all 62,000 remaining cases this year, the Home Office will need to work more than three times as fast.

At current rates, there are set to be more than 41,000 legacy backlog cases remaining by the end of the year.

Caption

Home Office figures released today show that the prime minister is struggling to make an impact in another key area of asylum policy: the use of expensive contingency accommodation, such as hotels and B&Bs, to house asylum seekers.

Mr Sunak pledged to end the practice in December, which cost the Home Office £2.3bn in the year to March. However, new data shows the number being housed in hotels has risen from 45,775 to 50,456.

That number is unlikely to be significantly impacted by today’s arrival of the first asylum seekers on the Bibby Stockholm, a barge purchased by the government to reduce the number of claimants staying in hotels.

Fewer than 50 people are set to board the vessel today, which has a total capacity of 500. The government has said it hopes the barge will reach full capacity by the end of the week.

Even if the barge is filled, however, it will only be able to house about 1% of the 50,456 asylum seekers currently staying in hotels.

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As a result, the barge is unlikely to put much of a dent in the government’s £2.3bn bill for contingency accommodation.

That cost has ballooned in recent years amid the growing asylum backlog and a chronic shortage of accommodation.

There are more than 136,000 asylum applications awaiting an initial decision, up from about 30,000 in 2019 and less than 6,000 in 2010.

Numbers have increased sharply over the past year as a result of a surge in applications, including from thousands arriving via small boats.

Even before the recent increase, however, the Home Office was struggling to keep up with the number of people applying.

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Dr Peter Walsh, senior researcher at the Migration Observatory, a research institute at the University of Oxford, told Sky News that Home Office caseworkers are struggling to process claims efficiently.

“It used to be that the average decision maker roughly five years ago was making about 100 decisions a year and that’s now fallen to 25,” he said.

“Why? Well, the immigration inspector highlighted use of antiquated IT systems, and also low morale and a lack of training. People are going into the role without any experience of the asylum system.

“And staff turnover is very high. That’s a problem because it takes anywhere between a year and 18 months to become proficient in the role. But people are actually quitting before that period because their morale is so low.”

The fact that applications are coming in at a faster rate than they are being processed means that the backlog is growing – counteracting the government’s progress in dealing with legacy cases.

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Not only has the number of decisions not kept pace with the number of applications, but the government has also been struggling to remove those whose claims are rejected or withdrawn.

The number of asylum seekers removed from the UK fell by more than half (54%) in the five years to 2019, before halving again in 2020 amid pandemic restrictions on air travel.

The number of removals has since risen, but remains far below where it was in previous years.

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“The challenge the government faces is getting countries to take back their citizens if they failed to get asylum in the UK,” says Mr Walsh.

“It’s not entirely clear why that is, but that absolutely is a problem. Countries were not taking people back and the UK doesn’t have the kinds of agreements with countries that would enable them to return citizens to their countries of nationality. It’s a really, really tough challenge the government faces.”

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Rwanda plan won’t dent the backlog

Another key plank of the government’s plan to deal with the backlog came into force last month.

The government hopes to cut the backlog by removing asylum seekers to Rwanda before they can lodge their claims in the UK, as part of a deal signed with the African state in April 2022.

Legal challenges have prevented any asylum seekers from being sent to Rwanda so far, but if the scheme does get off the ground the Rwandan government has indicated it can handle up to 200 applications per year.

By comparison, the UK received more than 75,000 asylum applications in 2022, including 44,896 from people arriving in small boats.

Had the Rwanda agreement been up and running last year, it would have cut the number of small boat asylum claims processed in the UK by just 0.4%.

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That means the Rwanda plan is unlikely to have any significant effect on the asylum.

Similarly, the opening of the Bibby Stockholm is unlikely to have much of an effect on the use of hotels to house asylum seekers.

In both cases, the government’s hopes are likely to rest not on their direct effect, but on their ability to reduce the number of people applying by presenting the UK as a hostile environment for asylum seekers.

“Part of this is about messaging and the symbolic aspect of the policy,” says Mr Walsh.

“Maybe it might have some deterrent effect. Of course, that’s not clear yet. But in terms of just the raw numbers, 500 doesn’t make a particularly big dent.

“So, if small boat arrivals continue at the rate that they are at present, that accommodation could very quickly be used up requiring the government to continue to use hotels, to continue to invest resources in retrofitting these disused military facilities and so on and so forth.

“This is really just a sticking plaster in the grand scheme of things.”


The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.

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Liz Truss calls for Trump-style ‘revolution’ in the UK after blaming Bank of England for her downfall

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Liz Truss calls for Trump-style 'revolution' in the UK after blaming Bank of England for her downfall

Liz Truss has defended her record as prime minister and called for “institutional change” in Britain in the same way she claims Donald Trump delivered “revolution in the US”.

The former Conservative leader has spoken to Sky’s Wilfred Frost on his The Master Investor Podcast nearly three years after she resigned as prime minister – 44 days after taking over from Boris Johnson.

Politics Hub: Follow live updates

Her downfall began when she and her then chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng unleashed £45bn of unfunded tax cuts on the markets in a mini-budget which sparked weeks of economic turmoil in 2022.

However, Ms Truss has now told Frost the fault for what happened during her premiership lay with the Bank of England (BoE) as she “wasn’t captain of the ship”.

She said: “The last time I looked, it’s the prime minister who is the democratically accountable person that runs the country, not the Bank of England… The Bank of England’s role is to work with the government to ensure financial stability, and they weren’t doing that. They were pursuing their own agenda.”

Ms Truss, the UK’s shortest-serving prime minister in history, added: “The fact is I wasn’t captain of the ship because I wasn’t running monetary policy. The Bank of England were running monetary policy. I’m very happy to take responsibility for things, provided I have the full ability to actually control them. I didn’t have the ability to control them.”

The former prime minister also accused the BoE and Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) of briefing against her after the mini-budget.

She added: “My mistake, if you want to put it like that was underestimating the sheer malevolence of the economic blob in Britain.”

Liz Truss speaking in Washington in 2022. Pic: AP
Image:
Liz Truss speaking in Washington in 2022. Pic: AP

‘We’ve lost our way’

Ms Truss also said there is “economic stagnation” and poor public services in the UK and this is at least party due to the “failures” of the BoE and the OBR as “institutions”.

She continued: “There’s no doubt we’ve lost our way. But I think what is happening now in Britain is the people are now realising how bad the situation is. And I think there is going be massive pressure… for institutional change in this country, and that is what we need, in a similar way to Trump delivering the revolution in the US.

“That is what we need. And I think that will happen.”

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Ms Truss later said she believes the UK is heading for “calamity” under Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and claimed the economy is in a worse state now than when she was in office.

She said she sees Sir Keir and Chancellor Rachel Reeves as part of the “economic orthodoxy” and added: “That has ruined this country, and we are heading for a calamity because of that.”

Ms Truss also said she doesn’t expect the Conservatives to win the next election and this will be partly due to a failure to take on the “leftist establishment”.

“So I don’t think (Tory leader Kemi Badenoch) is going to be prime minister at this stage,” she added.

Asked by Frost whether she will ever return to frontline politics, Ms Truss said: “I never rule anything out… what I’ve always been obsessed with is I want Britain to be a great nation again, and I’m depressed about how far we’ve sunk. The dire state of our economy is in the deindustrialisation. The fact that we don’t make things the same way we used to.”

The full conversation also includes an extensive debate about the mini-budget. Liz Truss was speaking on The Master Investor Podcast with Wilfred Frost, available to watch here and listen here.

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US regulators clarify rules for spot crypto trading

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US regulators clarify rules for spot crypto trading

US regulators clarify rules for spot crypto trading

In a joint statement, the SEC and CFTC said existing law does not block regulated exchanges from listing spot crypto products.

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New Green leader reveals he spoke to Jeremy Corbyn – and doesn’t rule out pact

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New Green leader reveals he spoke to Jeremy Corbyn - and doesn't rule out pact

The new leader of the Green Party has revealed he spoke to Jeremy Corbyn this week amid suggestions there could be a pact between their two parties. 

Zack Polanski, who comfortably beat his rivals Adrian Ramsay and Ellie Chowns to win the Green Party’s leadership election, told the Politics Hub with Sophy Ridge that he spoke to the former Labour leader on Monday.

There have been suggestions that the Greens could join forces with Mr Corbyn’s new party – which does not yet have a formal name – to avoid splitting the vote on the left.

Politics latest: Reeves’ authority not dented by reshuffle, No 10 says

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Polanski on Corbyn, NATO and flags

The question of a future potential pact with Mr Corbyn and his co-leader, the independent MP Zarah Sultana, became an issue in the Green Party’s leadership election, with Mr Polanski more keen on the idea than his co-leadership rivals.

Mr Polanski, who secured 20,411 votes – comfortably beating the 3,705 votes cast for the joint leadership bid of Mr Ramsay and Dr Chowns – praised Mr Corbyn for holding his own inquiry into the government’s conduct in Gaza, which will begin later this week.

The former Labour leader had tabled a private members’ bill calling for an independent public inquiry into the UK’s involvement in Israeli military operations in Gaza, but it did not progress in the House of Commons.

More on Green Party

Speaking to the Politics Hub with Sophy Ridge, Mr Polanski said: “I spoke to him [Mr Corbyn] briefly yesterday.”

He said Mr Corbyn’s inquiry was “the exact kind of example where even if someone is from a different party, but I’m absolutely aligned with what they’re doing, then I’ll always call out what I think is good for this country and good for our global politics”.

My Corbyn congratulated Mr Polanski for his “stunning victory” after the results were announced, and added: “Your campaign took on the rich and powerful, stood up for the dignity of all marginalised communities, and gave people hope! Real change is coming. I look forward to working with you to create a fairer, kinder world.”

Mr Polanski, who is currently serving as deputy leader, won the election on a platform of “eco-populism”, which he says will make the Greens a real alternative to Labour and Reform UK.

The London Assembly member, who is not an MP, will now become the party’s only leader, after Bristol MP Carla Denyer stepped down from her joint role with Mr Ramsay, triggering the contest.

While Mr Polanski has strongly criticised the policies of Nigel Farage, he has acknowledged his cut-through with voters, and has argued that the Green Party needs to offer a bolder message to voters, in the guise of wealth taxes and net zero policies.

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In full: Tuesday’s Politics Hub

The new Green leader also weighed into the debate about flying the St George’s Cross, after the prime minister Sir Keir Starmer said he had one in his office – while also cautioning against the flag being used as a political statement.

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Asked what he thought of the St George’s Cross, Mr Polanski said: “I think that migration is at the heart of this country. Migrants contribute a huge amount. That’s not a new thing – that has been traditionally throughout our history and that the English flag means different things to different people.

“And I think if people want to wave it because they’re being patriotic, particularly at football tournaments, I think there’s a huge space for patriotism in this country.

“But I’m also aware that for lots of people who have arrived in this country or people who aren’t even migrants, to be frank, Black and Asian communities, the flag can mean very different things around colonialism and empire. And that’s the thing about flags. It means different things to different people.”

Zack Polanski. Pic: PA
Image:
Zack Polanski. Pic: PA

He said he believed the idea of flying the English flag outside homes not in the context of sport was “quite imported from America”.

“If people want to do that then I think that’s up to people what they want to do.

“But I think at times of heightened tensions, I would say patriotism is actually about loving your neighbour, whether they’re from this country or not.”

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