Just 4% of asylum applications from people who cross the Channel are processed within a year, damning figures reveal today.
Of these 85% were granted refugee status or another protection status, a cross-party committee of MPs was told.
While their applications are being processed, asylum seekers are usually not allowed to work during the first 12 months.
The government is now spending nearly £7million a day housing asylum seekers in hotels and the cost could continue to rise, the Commons Home Affairs Committee learned.
MPs heard £5.6million a day was being spent on hotels for people who have arrived in the UK and have submitted a claim, along with £1.2million to house Afghan refugees who fled the Taliban while long-term accommodation is sought.
Back in February the government said the daily bill was £4.7million.
Officials told the committee 96% of asylum applications submitted by migrants crossing the Channel in 2021 are still outstanding.
Of the 4% completed, 85% were granted refugee status or another protection status.
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Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Dan Hobbs, director of asylum, protection and enforcement, said there is a “challenge in processing asylum claims in a timely way at present” and confirmed only a “small proportion” of last year’s arrivals had been granted asylum.
Asked by committee chairwoman Dame Diana Johnson if the cost was likely to go up again, Abi Tierney, director general of the passport office and UK visas and immigration, replied: “Yes.”
MPs learned the Home Office has only processed 4% of asylum claims by migrants who crossed the Channel last year and officials admitted the interception rate made by French police of migrants attempting the journey has fallen.
Concerns were also raised about conditions at the Manston Airport site in Kent, which is meant to be a short-term holding facility to process migrants when they arrive in the UK.
MPs heard the number of people arriving was “outstripping” the capacity of the site and some were being held there for as long as a month, compared with the 24 hours intended.
The cost of the UK’s asylum system has topped £2 billion a year, with the highest number of claims for two decades and record delays for people awaiting a decision.
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PA)
Home Office spending on asylum rose by £756million, from around £1.4billion in 2020/21 to £2.1billion in 2021/22 – the highest on record and more than double the amount spent in 2019/20.
Clandestine Channel threat commander Dan O’Mahoney told the committee in 2021 the interception rate for French police stopping migrants trying to cross the Channel was 50% and this year it has dropped to 42.5%.
He accepted this was a lower percentage but stressed it was a “much, much bigger number”, telling how French authorities had stopped 28,000 migrants crossing the Channel and intercepted and destroyed 1,072 boats so far this year.
“I should put on record my thanks to the French … this is around double what they managed to achieve last year, so that is really, really significant,” Mr O’Mahoney said.
But he added: “It is correct to say that migrants can attempt to cross on more than one occasion and therefore those 28,000 migrants may not be individual, different migrants, so it’s 28,000 attempts.”
In France migrants are not detained and processed after being caught attempting to cross the Channel. Mr O’Mahoney said French laws make it “difficult for French officers to take any action in that way”.
He told the committee French beach patrols in the north of the country were only “one brick in the wall” of the efforts to curb Channel crossings.
Work by the UK and French authorities have led to 55 serious organised crime gangs behind such crossings being “dismantled” since a joint intelligence cell was set up in France a couple of years ago, he added.
More than 38,000 people have arrived in the UK after crossing the Channel in over 900 boats in 2022 to date, compared with 28,526 last year.
In October alone, at least 5,000 have made the journey, according to provisional Government figures, but no crossings were recorded by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) on Monday or Tuesday.
Tamsin Baxter, Executive Director of External Affairs at the Refugee Council, said: “That only 4% of those arriving by boat to claim asylum in 2021 have had a decision on their asylum claim is appalling and indicative of an asylum system in urgent need of reform. The Home Office is already sitting on a backlog of more than 100,000 people awaiting an initial decision.
“The asylum backlog causes misery for every person waiting months, years even for news of their fate, unable to work or move on with their lives.