To understand the limited & shameful UK ‘welcome’ for #Ukraine refugees fleeing war you have to understand our broken asylum system. Constituents repeatedly complain to us about the delays, so we decided to trawl the statistics, and this is what we found.
Since 2015 every year there are on average 31,571 applications for asylum in the UK. This number has been fairly consistent each year, dropping a little during the pandemic
Even with NO significant increase in asylum seekers, applications completed within 6 months (the @ukhomeoffice target) has fallen from just under 70% in 2016 to a paltry 17.0% in 2020. The biggest decline was in 2018, well before the pandemic.
This increasingly broken process is reflected in the numbers of asylum seekers awaiting an initial decision (work in progress for more than 12 months). This has more than tripled since from 8923 in 2019 to 29,117 in 2021
The failures of the Home Office are wasting public money! The total cost of the asylum system (management, subsistence, operations, enforcement, etc) has dramatically increased from £500m per year between 2010/11 – 2014/15 to £800m per year 2015/16 – 2020/21
Remarkably, staff levels have increased. There were 260 asylum case workers in 2015/16 and this has steadily increased to 600 asylum case workers in 2020/21, but the Home Office system limits their efficiency. The increasing asylum costs reflect their own mismanagement.
So the Home Office are spending more money to process fewer asylum seekers, leaving more and more in limbo with the associated mental health and other issues, whilst complaints about housing, communications, family separation etc have all risen.
Overall, @ukhomeoffice under the Tories is getting worse & worse at handling asylum seekers & refugees, some of the worlds most vulnerable people. Government still has no viable scheme in place for Afghanis, and now they are failing Ukrainians. This will only get worse
Links to – Question : https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-questions/detail/2022-01-10/100545
& Data: https://gov.uk/government/publications/immigration-and-protection-data-q2-2021