Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Conclusion 18
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 ↗
Conclusion (the committee's words)
The Home Office said it is very difficult to estimate how many people will claim asylum because of uncertain migration patterns, but that it has low, medium and high scenarios that it uses for planning purposes.53 When we asked the Home Office when it planned to stop using hotels for people waiting for their asylum decision, it said there were “too many variables” and that it “deliberately” did not have a date for this.54
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".