Home Affairs Committee questions Home Office's Permanent Secretary and Second Permanent Secretary
The House of Commons Home Affairs Committee last week held an evidence session on the work of the Home Office with two top officials: Sir Matthew Rycroft, the Permanent Secretary of the Home Office, and Simon Ridley, the Second Permanent Secretary.
Image credit: WikipediaAmong the topics discussed in the wide-ranging session were ongoing challenges for accommodating asylum seekers and reducing the backlog of asylum claims awaiting an initial decsion.
Committee member Connor Rand MP expressed concern over the reliance on hotels to house asylum seekers, describing it as bad for taxpayers, local communities, and the asylum seekers themselves. Rand also asked for an update on the Home Office's progress in clearing the backlog.
Sir Matthew Rycroft explained in reply that the Government fully agrees hotels should primarily serve tourism, business, and other purposes, rather than housing asylum seekers. He acknowledged that using hotels for this purpose is far from ideal for both local communities and asylum seekers. Rycroft emphasised the importance of returning to the private rental market as a core aspect of the asylum strategy, but noted that alternative arrangements are necessary when private accommodation is unavailable. He also highlighted efforts to speed up Home Office decision-making by increasing the number of caseworkers and accelerating the overall asylum process.
Rycroft had earlier told the Committee that the number of hotels being used to house asylum seekers had fallen from over 400 to 218. Although the Government aims to eliminate the use of asylum hotels by the end of the current Parliament, Rycroft cautioned that the progress would not follow a smooth, steady decline and is likely to involve fluctuations along the way.
Simon Ridley provided the Committee with details on the asylum backlog, stating: "In terms of progress on the initial backlog, the decision making is essentially a pipeline from setting up interviews, to people coming to them, getting to a decision, and beyond that moving on from our accommodation when they are granted or removed. The number of asylum interviews was just under 1,200 in June [2024]. By September, we had built it up to about 11,000 a month. We have kept going at that rate, essentially working from the capacity that we have. We will maintain that rate of decision making as we work our way through the initial decision backlog over the course of this year. The last published numbers were for the end of September, when there were 97,000 people awaiting an initial decision. That number is on the way down, and we will publish the next set of statistics at the end of the month."
Ridley highlighted how the Conservative's Illegal Migration Act had created a "second backlog," as many claims after 7 March 2023 were deemed inadmissible to the asylum system and could not be processed until legislative changes were introduced by the Labour government.
Outlining the Home Office's current priorities, Ridley explained: "First, we are trying to reduce, obviously through the work on border security, the number of irregular arrivals and therefore some of the numbers coming into our asylum system. We are trying to make sure that others who come into our asylum system are not misusing other routes in. So we are reducing intake. We then need to make our decisions more quickly, and a key part of that is reducing the backlog so that we have fewer people in accommodation. Some of those people, where they are not granted asylum, then appeal. We have another line of work we have to do with the MOJ to get that number down, so that overall we have fewer people in our system."
Amid concerns about the rapid scaling-up of decision-making, Connor Rand asked whether the quality of decisions had been compromised. Ridley assured the Committee that measures were in place to ensure quality, including enhanced training for caseworkers and regular sampling of decisions. He acknowledged the importance of maintaining decision quality while working through the backlog.
Committee member Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP inquired about the high number of asylum cases marked as having "administrative outcomes" or withdrawals in 2024. Ridley explained that withdrawals can occur when claimants disengage with the system, often because they have left the country. While acknowledging that withdrawal numbers were higher during the clearance of the legacy backlog, Ridley noted that these figures were returning to normal as newer cases were processed.
Simon Ridley told the Committee: "The first thing to say is that withdrawal of claims is a long-standing part of the asylum system overall. There are broadly two types of withdrawal. The first is where a claimant withdraws their claim, as is their own preference. That is called an explicit withdrawal. The second is where the Home Office withdraws a claim. There is a lot of guidance for caseworkers and a number of controls around it, and they are set out in the immigration rules.
"There are a number of reasons for withdrawal. It is essentially about people staying in touch with the system and making themselves available for interviews and the like. If people continuously do not turn up for interviews and engage with the process, we have the scope to withdraw.
"You are right that that number was much higher than usual as we cleared the legacy backlog in 2023. Some of the reason for that was that we were dealing with very old cases, where people had been in the system for a very long time and were less likely to be in touch. They may have left the country, or there may be various other reasons. We are now seeing that number come back down from those highs. There are still withdrawals from the system for those reasons, but as the cohort of asylum seekers we are answering cases on gets more recent, if you like, it is much less likely to happen."
He continued following a further question about how many withdrawn claims end up going back into the system: "Some people do go back into the system—you can effectively claim that the withdrawal was done on the wrong basis and then come back into the system. I do not have the precise number with me today, but we manage that through the process. We have also put in place a new team, which supports people as we get in contact with them. They are a sort of interview contact team, because that is the key place where people get withdrawn."
You can read the full transcript of the evidence session here.