Written question asked by Keith Vaz (Labour) on Wednesday, 25 May 2005, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Monday, 6 June 2005. It was answered by Bridget Prentice (Labour) on Monday, 6 June 2005 on behalf of the Department for Constitutional Affairs.

Immigration Tribunal

Question: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Constitutional Affairs what the current backlog of cases at the Immigration Tribunal is.

Answer: The latest provisional information shows that at the end of March 2005 the Immigration Appellate Authority (IAA) had the following outstanding work: 25,304 Adjudicator appeals, 5,217 applications for permission to appeal to the Immigration Appeals Tribunal (IAT) and 4,783 substantive IAT appeal hearings. This covers all asylum and immigration work, including family visitor visas. There has been no backlog at the Adjudicator tier though there have been delays at the permission application and substantive appeal stages of the IAT. It is provisionally estimated that 2,000 IAT appeals were affected by these delays and could be classified as backlogged. On 4 April 2005 the commencement of section 26 of ““The Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Act 2004”” introduced a unified appeals system under the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal (AIT). All outstanding work from the IAA and the IAT has been transferred to an equivalent appeal stage within the AIT.

Secondary information

Type: Written question
Reference: 1804; 434 c354W;434 c356W
Session: 2005-06
Subjects: Appeals Administrative delays Immigration Asylum and Immigration Tribunal Immigration Appellate Authority