Written question asked by Humfrey Malins (Conservative) on Monday, 6 June 2005, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Wednesday, 8 June 2005. It was answered by Tony McNulty (Labour) on Tuesday, 14 June 2005 on behalf of the Home Office.

Asylum Seekers

Question: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will take steps to speed up the asylum process.

Answer: Our current targets for the processing of asylum claims are to: decide 75 per cent. of new asylum applications within two months; ensure that 65 per cent. of new substantive asylum applications are decided, including final appeal, within six months; take 60 per cent. of detained NSA designated list claimants who were certified as clearly unfounded and detained throughout the process from claim to removal within 14 days. In addition, as we made clear in the five-year strategy for asylum and immigration, ““Controlling our Borders: Making migration work for Britain”” which was published in February 2005 [Cm 6472], we are planning to introduce faster, tightly-managed processes for all new asylum claimants. Existing detained processes will continue alongside new, faster, non-detained processes which are currently being developed and will be implemented in phases which will include tight case-management as a specific feature.

Secondary information