Asylum backlog: Government must triple activity to meet target
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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%.
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.
The defence secretary has said he is “angry inside” over the infected blood scandal ahead of a long-waited report into the decades-long injustice.
Grant Shapps told Sky News he agreed it had been one of the most “shameful failures” of government and said he was dismayed by the “lack of anybody taking responsibility”.
The findings of a public inquiry into the scandal, chaired by Sir Brian Langstaff, are due to be published on Monday.
From 1970 to the 1990s, tens of thousands of people were infected with contaminated blood through blood products or blood transfusions given via the NHS. People were infected with hepatitis or HIV – in some cases with both.
An estimated 3,000 people died as a result.
Politics latest: West in an ‘existential battle’ over world order, Shapps warns
Mr Shapps told Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips that the scandal was a “massive injustice which needs to be put right” and said the government would act on the report.
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Thousands of people died after being given infected blood
He said that while he was yet to see the report, he hoped it would finally allow families’ pain and loss to be acknowledged and for the government to properly respond.
Mr Shapps said he had spoken to relatives of several victims, including a couple who had lost their son, and said their stories made feel him “angry inside”.
He added: “It just made me angry to know they had lost their son without anyone ever taking responsibility, so I think this is why this report tomorrow is very important.”
Successive governments have been blamed for failing to take responsibility and the current government has been accused of trying to delay compensation to victims after an inquiry was first set up by Theresa May in 2017.
It is estimated that the compensation bill could now exceed £10m.
The defence secretary admitted the process of delivering payouts to victims had gone on for “so long”.
He added: “This is a massive injustice which needs to be put right.
“And I know the government said we will. The report tomorrow, I think, will be the day for that family and others and I know the government will want to respond quickly.”
Asked whether Prime Minister Rishi Sunak would apologise to the victims, Mr Shapps said: “I don’t want to mislead because I don’t have special insight into that.”
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Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting also told Trevor Phillips that he expected “successive governments” to be criticised in the report by Sir Brian.
“Everyone has got their responsibility to bear in this appalling scandal and we have got a shared responsibility to put it right,” he said.
“The moment to act can’t come soon enough.”
Sir Brian is due to deliver his final report just after midday on Monday.
This move follows a recent crackdown that involved confiscating 2,000 cryptocurrency mining devices as part of an anti-corruption initiative.
Billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe has told Sky News that Britain is ready for a change of government after scolding the Conservatives over their handling of the economy and immigration after Brexit.
While insisting his petrochemicals conglomerate INEOS is apolitical, Sir Jim backed Brexit and spent last weekend with Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer at Manchester United – the football club he now runs as minority owner.
“I’m sure Keir will do a very good job at running the country – I have no questions about that,” Sir Jim said in an exclusive interview.
“There’s no question that the Conservatives have had a good run,” he added. “I think most of the country probably feels it’s time for a change. And I sort of get that, really.”
Read more: Sir Jim’s mission to succeed at ‘the one challenge the UK has never brought home’
Sir Jim was a prominent backer of leaving the European Union in the 2016 referendum but now has issues with how Brexit was delivered by Tory prime ministers.
“Brexit sort of unfortunately didn’t turn out as people anticipated because… Brexit was largely about immigration,” Sir Jim said.
“That was the biggest component of that vote. People were getting fed up with the influx of the city of Southampton coming in every year. I think last year it was two times Southampton.
“I mean, no small island like the UK could cope with vast numbers of people coming into the UK.
“I mean, it just overburdens the National Health Service, the traffic service, the police, everybody.
“The country was designed for 55 or 60 million people and we’ve got 70 million people and all the services break down as a consequence.
“That’s what Brexit was all about and nobody’s implemented that. They just keep talking about it. But nothing’s been done, which is why I think we’ll finish up with the change of government.”
UK needs to get ‘sharper on the business front’
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has indicated an election is due this year but Monaco-based Sir Jim is unimpressed by the Conservatives’ handling of the economy.
“The UK does need to get a bit sharper on the business front,” he said. “I think the biggest objective for the government is to create growth in the economy.
“There’s two parts of the economy, there’s the services side of the economy and there’s the manufacturing side. And the manufacturing, unfortunately, has been sliding away now for the last 25 years.
“We were very similar in scale to Germany probably 25 years ago.
“But today we’re just a fraction of where Germany is and I think that isn’t healthy for the British economy… particularly when you think the north of England is very manufacturing based, and that talks to things like energy competitiveness, it talks to things like, why do you put an immensely high tax on the North Sea?
“That just disincentivises people from finding hydrocarbons in the North Sea, in energy.
“And what we need is competitive energy. So I mean, in America, in the energy world, in the oil and gas world, they just apply a corporation tax to the oil and gas companies, which is about 30%. And in the UK we’ve got this tax of 75% because we want to kill off the oil and gas companies.
“But if we don’t have competitive energy, we’re not going to have a healthy manufacturing industry. And that just makes no sense to me at all. No.”
‘We’re apolitical’
Asked about INEOS donating to Labour, Sir Jim replied: “We’re apolitical, INEOS.
“We just want a successful manufacturing sector in the UK and we’ve talked to the government about that. It’s pretty clear about our views.”
Sir Jim was keener to talk about the economy and politics than his role at struggling Manchester United, which he bought a 27.7% stake in from the American Glazer family in February – giving him an even higher business profile.
Old Trafford stadium in Manchester. Pic: AP
Push for stadium of the North
He is continuing to push for public funds to regenerate Old Trafford and the surrounding areas despite no apparent political support being forthcoming. Sir Keir was hosted at the stadium for a Premier League match last weekend just as heavy rain exposed the fragility of the ageing venue.
“There’s a very good case, in my view, for having a stadium of the North, which would serve the northern part of the country in that arena of football,” Sir Jim said. “If you look at the number of Champions League the North West has won, it’s 10. London has won two.
“And yet everybody from the North has to get down to London to watch a big football match. And there should be one [a large stadium] in the North, in my view.
“But it’s also important for the southern side of Manchester, you know, to regenerate.
“It’s the sort of second capital of the country where the Industrial Revolution began.
“But if you have a regeneration project, you need a nucleus or a regeneration project and having that world-class stadium there, I think would provide the impetus to regenerate that region.”
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