Recommendation 6

The Home Office failed to convince us that it understands the full implications of its programme on the wider asylum system, affecting the ability of others to plan. The current business case for the asylum and protection transformation programme is incomplete and unrealistic. The Home Office acknowledged that it has not looked broadly enough at the impact of rapidly clearing its asylum backlog, and that its business case ignores the challenges and costs that bodies such as Immigration Enforcement and the courts will need to overcome to avoid creating new backlogs. The Home Office will not be updating its business case until early 2024, at least six months later than it had told the NAO and after the date it expects to have made decisions on all of the older, ‘legacy’ cases. This delay means other organisations in the wider asylum system cannot make informed plans and makes it more likely that new backlogs will appear elsewhere in the asylum system. Recommendation 6: The Home Office should publish its updated business case so the intentions and impacts of the Programme are clear and transparent to Parliament, the public and other organisations. In its Treasury Minute response, the Home Office should set a date by which this business case will be published. 8 The Asylum Transformation Programme 1 Working through the backlog of asylum decisions