Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 11
Seventy-Sixth Report - The Asylum Transformation Programme
Published 27 Oct 2023
Addressed to HM Treasury
Public Accounts Committee The Asylum Transformation Programme All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
When deciding on an asylum claim, the Home Office can make what it calls ‘administrative decisions’ if a person claiming asylum withdraws their claim or if the Home Office decides a claim is ‘implicitly withdrawn’. The Home Office may withdraw a claim if, for example, a person seeking asylum leaves the UK before the Home Office decides their claim, fails to attend an asylum interview, or fails to complete an asylum questionnaire when asked to do so.26 The poor design, and the requirement to complete the questionnaire in English, may mean that some people are less likely to return the questionnaire, leading the Home Office to decide that an asylum claim has been implicitly withdrawn.27 In April 2023, 72% of asylum decisions made by the Home Office were administrative decisions.28 The Home Office told us that the increase in administrative decisions coincided with it focusing on claims for people from Albania, and that at the time of our evidence session it was making more substantive decisions.29
From: Public Accounts Committee, Seventy-Sixth Report - The Asylum Transformation Programme (HC 1334), 27 October 2023
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 14 February 2024 (deadline 27 December 2023).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government agrees with the Committee's recommendations on the asylum backlog, the streamlined process and local authority engagement, and disagrees with those on hotels, safeguarding and publishing the Programme Business Case.
- On the backlog, the government agrees with the recommendation, describes it as implemented and says the legacy backlog target has been met; it says flow claims "will be prioritised from 2024 onwards".
- On hotels, it disagrees with the recommendation to set out how and by when it will stop using them, but says it has "plans in place to close over 50 hotels before the end of January 2024" and will keep modelling assumptions "under regular review".
- On local authorities, it agrees, with a target implementation date of "iterative to December 2025", and says pilots with London, Wales and South West England will run between January and March 2024.
- It disagrees with publishing the Programme Business Case, stating that "it is not standard practice" to do so, and offers a private meeting with the Committee once HM Treasury approves it, which it anticipates by "the Summer of 2024".