Recommendation 4

The Home Office must establish why the proportion of initial decisions found to be flawed has been gradually increasing and what they plan to do to improve the quality of asylum decision-making. This plan must include providing adequate support and training to staff who are handling difficult cases on a day-by-day basis and may be suffering from ‘compassion fatigue’. The Home Office should promote a human rights culture where the rights and dignity of asylum applicants is at the heart of decision- making, as opposed to a culture in which staff are treated as and perceive of themselves as ‘gatekeepers’ of the asylum system. (Paragraph 46) Differential treatment