Home Secretary defends claim that Sunak’s asylum pledge has been met

Home Secretary defends claim that Sunak’s asylum pledge has been met

The prime minister’s promises to bring immigration down were his first public words of 2024 across the pages of the Daily Express on Twitter or X and echoed today by his Home Secretary who claimed a towering backlog of Asylum cases had been worked through we said that we

Would uh process them all we have processed them all in a small number of cases particularly complicated cases where there are disputes about age or security concerned there is further work to do figures out today do represent a victory for the government with Boat Crossings this year down by some 36% and

112,000 Asylum claims opened and given an initial decision but when the government talks about the backlog it means cases that hadn’t been looked at before June 2022 the so-called Legacy backlog the majority have been assessed but 4,500 cases the home office claims a complex still outstanding and the backlog itself

Has been rebranded new cases after June 2022 are now called the flow backlog add them and 999,000 claims remain unopened well wishi sunak claim to have cleared the Asylum backlog is just totally false in fact the figures are nearly 100,000 cases and they haven’t even fully cleared the bit of the backlog

They were targeting government statistics out today shown interesting acceleration in the process towards the end of last year 50 of the 110,000 application decisions were made in the last 3 months of 2023 alone now that’s a five-fold increase on the same period last year but the figures also

Show us that there’s been a dramatic increase in the number of applications being shelved many are worried that the majority of those whose applications have been withdrawn will have gone under the radar of the 112,000 decisions that were made in 2023 there are 35,000 of those so around

The third where actually that decision wasn’t a grant or refusal but that claim’s just been taken out of the backlog the information doesn’t tell us whether it’s because that person chose to withdraw the claim or the home office withdrew it for them because they maybe hadn’t responded to a letter from the

Home office but what we’re really concerned about at the refugee council is that we simply don’t know where those people are or what’s happened to them and certainly we think that many of those people now will be at risk of exploitation the majority of those in the backlog mentioned today will have

Arrived outside of government schemes by boat Lorry or other means and more than 2third have been granted Asylum an admission through numbers that many of those Crossing by boat do have a legal right to live here like faad who fled religious persecution in Iran in 2019

And was Grant granted Asylum a year and a half later I didn’t expect to see the scenes that I saw there it it was really traumatic I hope that this Narrative of like these people has come to cause any harm to the country or to like to to

That they have come by choice and uh you know that the this this Narrative of like this threatening Narrative of like people making them feeling more more insecure and more traumatized kind of we can get rid of that under the government’s illegal migration Bill many of those joining the current backlog who

Arrive by boat or Lorry can be detained or if the government can clear the legal hurdles sent to Rwanda to be processed through their Asylum system the Supreme Court ruled that unlawful in November but it’s a policy Central to Rishi Sak’s election pit rooll whether the plane set off before before then or

Not well no one from the government was available to come on the program but earlier I spoke to the shadow Home Secretary ofet Cooper and asked if she welcomed the big increase in claims being processed good evening Cassie well look the government under the conservatives pride of this total collapse in home

Office decision making over the last few years that’s why the backloggers soared we’ve got so many people in Asylum hotels and that is still at a record high that is costing the taxpayer 8 million a day and that’s why I think Rishi sunak really needs to stop the

Boasts and get on with actually delivering instead so you could be months away from being in government in the home office yourself so how soon would a labor government stop the boats how soon would you clear Asylum Seekers from those hotels that you’re so concerned about we’ve already set out a

Fivepoint plan and that means strengthening border security and fixing the Tor chaos in the Asylum system the top three things that we would do on that is set up a new crossboard policing unit with new stronger powers new security agreement as well as more police officers to work with European

Forces to go after the gangs and smash their supply chains so that you stop the boats reaching the French Coast in the first place second thing is fully clearing the backlog and ending Asylum Hotel use including these FastTrack procedures and the third thing is a new returns and enforcement unit with a

Thousand additional staff because the number of returns has dropped by 50% well you’ve pledged to ditch the Rwanda scheme if you get into government are you open to processing claims in other third countries offshore as other European countries are considering well there are already different forms of offshore processing

In the UK Asylum system for example the homes for Ukraine scheme is a form of offshore processing people apply uh from other countries their cases are dealt with and then they’re given visas similarly the Hong Kong system so would you expanding those I mean Rwanda you made that quite clear but other third

Countries sounds to me like you’re quite tempted by that suggestion so we’ve long said that the government should be seeking to to secure a new agreement with European countries to include returns and what K stos always said is that we have to look at what works I

Think what most people want to see is strong border security and also a properly controlled and managed Asylum system the government wants to stop the gangs too and they haven’t had much success so I mean you know people yeah but people people may struggle to believe that another government would

Have any better success so I want to push you on this um offshore processing scheme because you know Italy Austria Germany Denmark they’re all exploring processing Asylum claims outside the EU if it’s good enough for them why not you what K sta said is that we would look at

Anything that works and that is I think the real practical pragmatic approach that you would expect us to take to make sure that we can deliver those two things the uh Stronger border security and also a properly managed and controlled Asylum system so the UK does

Our bit but so we also have proper enforcement in place and if you get that deal with the EU that you want do you accept that you would have to take a share of uh the refugees the migrants as a kind of quota scheme you’d have to

Take some share you just don’t know what it is no we’re not going to to join the EU member states quota scheme we’ve been really clear about that we are not member states and member state or we are not going to be we’ve left how you going

Deal with joining so what we are looking at is what we could do in terms of having returns but also recognizing that there are children for example unaccompanied Asylum children who have family in the UK who are currently being exploited by people traffickers and people Smugglers any Arrangements that

You have to do always have to be in the interest of the UK and we have to be very clear about that but let’s be in no doubt we won’t be joining the EU member states quota scheme that is for member states the UK is not a member State IET

Cooper thanks very much thank you

The government has been accused of massaging the asylum numbers after claiming it’s cleared the backlog of asylum claims, built up before the end of June 2022.

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Its own figures however show that more than four and a half thousand complex applications are still awaiting a decision. Meanwhile the overall backlog of outstanding asylum applications – old and new – is almost a hundred thousand.
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