Member

At the current rate of people claiming asylum and the Home Office deciding cases, experts estimate that it will take five years to clear the backlog. Can the Minister say what his current expectation is of clearing that backlog? As of June 2025, there were 2,057 asylum caseworkers in the Home Office. We on these Benches would move them out of the Home Office and set up dedicated processing units, putting 4,000 caseworkers into those processing centres to clear the backlog within six months. In other words, we would put more energy into it to do it. These centres and extra caseworkers would be entirely funded through the savings from getting asylum seekers out of hotels.