Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)

I cannot give the noble Baroness the definitive figure on small boat arrival asylum claims, but roughly 61% to 65% of asylum claims are accepted, and roughly 35% are not. I can reflect on the exact figures, but those are the rough figures. From the Government’s perspective, we then have to speed up the asylum claims so we can make those assessments much more speedily. Part of the reason for the problem of having a large number of people in hotels is that those asylum applications were not speedily assessed. Therefore, people have been left in limbo in asylum hotels. Those numbers have grown exponentially during the period 2015 to 2024. There was a dip just before the election, which I acknowledge, but further energy needs to be put into that to close the hotels—which we intend to do—and to speed up the asylum claim procedure to determine who has a right to asylum. There are separate issues, which have been raised by a number of noble Lords, such as ECHR obligations, refugee convention obligations, et cetera. But the Government simply believe that we need to speed up those asylum claims, and the measures in the Bill and externally from executive action and the immigration White Paper, along with future proposals, are designed to do that. I urge the noble Lord to withdraw his clause stand part notice.