New measures for the UK asylum system amidst record processing backlogs

Friday 13 January 2023

On 4 January 2023, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak spoke on the Government’s policy platform for the new year, naming five priorities – halving inflation, growing the economy, reducing the national debt, cutting NHS wait times, and stopping ‘the boats’. The latter promise on migration echoes the Prime Minister’s speech on 16 December 2022. In the year’s final weeks, Sunak unveiled a series of new measures for the UK asylum system before the House of Commons. These changes come whilst the Home Office faces unprecedented processing backlogs, with 117,000 cases relating to 143,377 people awaiting an initial decision. Changes were announced throughout December 2022, such as a £5 million investment into the Immigration and Asylum Chamber to focus efforts on the 25,000 cases currently in the tribunal system. The Home Office attributes the backlog to various factors, ranging from transitory personnel resources to increasingly complex cases and constraints under EU human rights law, and solutions to this national crisis are hotly debated. This article considers some of the measures proposed by the Prime Minister with consideration of the potential impact on the Immigration System.

Context

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the asylum backlog has risen to an all-time peak. The Home Office identified the shift towards crossing the English Channel in small boats as a means of arriving in the United Kingdom to claim asylum as a top policy priority for the Government. In the past, there have been sharp increases in asylum claims, including a backlog of 100,000 asylum seekers in 2000 during the Kosovo conflict and alleged Home Office mismanagement. Nevertheless, this period of increased annual applications has made public and political pressure to act more significant than ever.

Asylum seekers in the UK do not have the right to work whilst their asylum claims are pending unless they have been waiting on their claim for more than one year – in which case, limited right to work in roles on the Shortage Occupation List may be provided upon request. However, such narrow parameters for legal work can prove challenging for individuals. As such, the Government offers accommodation and £40.85 per person weekly, amounting to £5.84 per day. On 21 December 2022, the High Court ordered that the Home Secretary immediately increase asylum support payments to £45 a week in the case of R(CB) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2022] EWHC 3329 (Admin), as many asylum seekers are forced into financial destitution.

The ban on legal work and low levels of individual financial support from the Government fosters further illegal working practices. Whilst asylum support is low at the individual level, costs of financially supporting all asylum seekers in backlog cost taxpayers an estimated £1.5 billion per year. Were asylum seekers granted the right to work, asylum seekers could fill labour shortages and the Home Office could, in turn, reduce asylum support for those in employment – thereby reducing costs to taxpayers and benefitting the economy. Across the ideological spectrum, the current asylum system is viewed as untenable, leading to Government initiatives such as the New Plan for Immigration, the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 and the latest plans outlined in the Prime Minister’s recent statements.

Proposed measures

Creation of a permanent Small Boats Operational Command     

In cooperation with the military, civilian police, and the National Crime Agency (NCA), the Home Office will head a unified operational command tasked with monitoring small boat activity across the Channel. Currently, the Royal Navy holds operational primacy over Channel boat crossings, but this shall change in January 2023.

The new operational command will coordinate ‘intelligence, interception, processing, and enforcement’ through technological advances for reconnaissance, surveillance, identification, and prosecution of smugglers. The Government will add more than 700 new staff members to the command and double NCA funding dedicated to eradicating organised immigration crime in mainland Europe.

Twofold increase in illegal working raids and financial data sharing  

Immigration officers will increase raids on illegal working practices by 50%. The Home Office also plans to restart data sharing and checks on existing UK bank accounts. In 2018, Home Secretary Sajid Javid suspended the financial data-sharing scheme to avoid impacting members of the Windrush generation. The efficacy of these proposals in deterring small boat crossings is questionable, as they represent secondary impacts of the hostile environment policy.

Shift from hotel housing to alternative accommodation     

One of the most criticised aspects of the UK asylum system is the use of hotel accommodation to house asylum seekers whilst their cases are pending with the Home Office. Due to the increased backlog and subsequent lack of long-term accommodation options, the Government has negotiated more than 200 hotels to house asylum seekers. The Prime Minister noted in his speech that the Government spends approximately £5.5 million per day in hotel costs to meet accommodation needs. As such, he intends to end the practice by housing individuals in ‘disused holiday parks, former student halls, and surplus military sites’ at half the cost of hotels. Mr Sunak also called on local authorities to ‘take their fair share of asylum seekers in the private rental sector’. Given the national outcry over recently arrived asylum seekers at the Manston processing centre in Kent and infectious disease outbreaks leading to the death of a man on 19 November 2022, opponents to the plan have expressed concerns regarding this shift.

Re-engineering of the end-to-end asylum process     

According to the Refugee Council, asylum seekers face average waiting times of one to three years for an initial decision on their claim. The Prime Minister has acknowledged that the Home Office must ‘process claims in days or weeks, not months or years’, but how the Government seeks to achieve these figures has been a procedural quandary.

The asylum process involves at least two interviews, significant amounts of paperwork and hundreds of pages of caseworker guidance, whereas proposed measures include paring down these steps, but this may come at the expense of caseworkers’ thoroughness. Sunak proposed that caseworkers shall also specialise in teams based on the nationality of asylum seekers. Given the political, historical, and socioeconomic factors involved in different countries and the plethora of relevant Home Office guidance and country policy information notes, this change may prove a logical decision. This division of caseworkers could better support the quality of decision making but may also allow the Home Office to prioritise or de-prioritise certain nationalities by investing personnel resources in specific caseworker teams.

The shift to reduce the period during which individuals recognised as potential victims of modern slavery can receive support such as legal advice, accommodation, and protection from 45 days to 30 days – the mandatory legal minimum under the European Convention Against Trafficking Treaty – is cause for concern.

Cooperation agreement with the Albanian Government 

The most significant aspect of the Prime Minister’s statement involved a returns deal with the Albanian Government. Approximately one-third of those who have crossed the Channel in small boats are Albanian nationals, and the UK Government and governments in several European nations claim that Albania is a ‘safe, prosperous European country’. As such, the UK Government aims to:

  • station Border Force officers in Tirana International Airport;
  • issue new Albanian country guidance that ‘make[s] it crystal clear that Albania is a safe country’;
  • ‘significantly raise the threshold’ for modern slavery through the requirement for objective evidence rather than suspicion of victimhood;
  • implement a returns deal with the Albanian Government; and
  • form a new intake unit to expedite Albanian asylum claims within weeks by onboarding 400 new specialist caseworkers.

Through these measures, the UK Government shall ‘keep going with weekly flights until all the Albanians in our backlog have been removed’. However, it is interesting to note that 90% of women and children’s asylum claims are approved based on Home Office policy guidance and international legal standards.

UK-Rwanda Migration and Economic Development Partnership

Finally, the Government intends to restart the first flights to Rwanda under the Migration and Economic Development Partnership as soon as legal proceedings conclude. Whilst the High Court handed down its judgment in favour of the Government on Monday 19 December, this is unlikely to mark the end of litigation on the controversial plan.

A way forward? 

The Prime Minister pledged in his speech that it is his goal to clear the current backlog by the end of 2023, aided by asylum caseworkers’ threefold increase in productivity. Later in the day, the Government clarified that this target date should only cover asylum claims initiated before June 2022. Nevertheless, plans to tackle the asylum backlog at long last show that, for better or worse, the Government is resolved to make changes to protection claims. How the legal and political ramifications will come to fruition in the short, medium, and long term remains to be seen.

Get in touch

To learn more about forthcoming changes to UK immigration law, see our website, contact your assigned LDI lawyer or email enquiries@lauradevine.com.

Hannah Berkeley


Solicitor - PSL

Phoebe Warren


Paralegal - PSL


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