Rishi Sunak pledges more staff to help clear asylum backlog

Rishi Sunak has promised more staff to help clear the UK’s backlog of asylum seekers by the end of next year.

Under a plan unveiled by the prime minister, a dedicated unit of 400 specialists will be set up to handle claims from Albanians.

UK border officials will also be posted at Albania’s main airport, under a new deal with the country.

There will also be 700 staff for a new unit to monitor small boats crossing the English Channel.

Meanwhile, Mr Sunak pledged to end the use of hotels for asylum seekers and announced plans to house 10,000 individuals waiting on claims in disused holiday parks, former student halls, and surplus military sites.

The asylum backlog has ballooned in recent years, with 143,377 awaiting an initial decision on their application and unable to work. Of these, nearly 100,000 have been waiting more than six months.

Pressure has been building on the Home Office, as increasing numbers of claimants, housed in private and hotel accommodation, wait for a decision by officials.

This has seen Mr Sunak label the small boats crisis a priority for his premiership.

More than 40,000 people have crossed the Channel in small boats so far this year – the highest number since figures began to be collected in 2018.

There has been a rapid increase in the number of Albanians crossing the Channel and this nationality now make up 35% of arrivals.

Ministers say Albania is a safe country and Albanians are less likely to be granted asylum than other nationalities.

Speaking in the Commons, Mr Sunak said it was “unfair” that people were claiming asylum after entering the UK illegally.

He outlined a series of measures to MPs, including:

Mr Sunak also pledged to increase raids to enforce deportations.

He promised that early next year, ministers would introduce new laws to “make unambiguously clear that if you enter the UK illegally, you should not be able to remain here”.

He said the legislation would also make it harder to make “late or spurious claims” to frustrate deportation attempts.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said he welcomed the announcement of additional staff, but added there had so far been a “total failure of any co-ordinated response” to criminal trafficking gangs.

Labour MP Dame Diana Johnson, who chairs the Commons Home Affairs Committee, questioned whether there were enough staff to clear the backlog.

The prime minister’s ambition to clear the backlog within a year will be welcomed by many, as will the resources to speed up claims, with a doubling in the number of caseworkers. But we have heard such promises before without seeing the results.

Faster processing risks poorer decisions and more successful appeals. It is skilled and sensitive work.

Currently, a caseworker makes fewer than two decisions a week, but the Home Office hopes to more than double that.

Recruiting and training staff will take time and resources. The home secretary had already announced an increase of 500 caseworkers by March next year but accepted that a 46% attrition rate meant this would only increase the total by around 300 to 1,300.

Getting through the backlog by this time next year means processing almost 3,000 extra claims a week, a mighty challenge.

It is also notable that the prime minister did not use his statement to respond to a renewed call today from his Migration Advisory Committee that asylum seekers be allowed to work.

Mr Sunak also pledged to “significantly raise the threshold someone has to meet to be considered a modern slave”, which ministers have previously claimed is being abused.

But former Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May warned “people-smuggling and human-trafficking are distinct and separate crimes”, with modern slavery “a very real and current threat”.

She urged Mr Sunak not to “diminish our world-leading protections for the victims of this terrible, horrific crime”.

The Refugee Council said treating people “who come to the UK in search of safety as illegal criminals” was “deeply disturbing and flies in the face of international law”.

The charity said singling out Albanians also risked “causing division” and it was “very simplistic to blithely label a country as safe when in reality it has serious problems with criminal and sexual exploitation of women and children”.

Tim Naor Hilton, chief executive of charity Refugee Action, criticised the government for failing to commit to creating safe routes for people to come to the UK, which he said “could end most small boat crossings overnight”.

“Most of these changes are cruel, ineffective and unlawful and will do nothing to fix the real problems in the system,” he said.