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Ministers must grant leave to remain to refugees stuck in the government's broken asylum system
Campaigners call on the government to end its ‘cruel obsession with deterrence’ after figures show over 175,400 people are still waiting for an initial decision on their asylum applications
A group of people are brought in to Dungeness, Kent, onboard an RNLI Dungeness Lifeboat, following a small boat incident in the Channel, August 19, 2023
TORY ministers must grant leave to remain to refugees who have waited more than a year for a decision on their asylum claim, campaigners said today after the claims backlog hit record highs.
A whopping 175,457 people were waiting for an initial decision on their asylum applications at the end of June, according to Home Office figures published today – up 44 per cent from the same month last year and the highest figure ever recorded.
And in another record, eight out of 10 claimants – 139,961 people – had been left waiting longer than six months for an initial decision as of early summer, up 57 per cent in a year, the floundering government department admitted.
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