When is a backlog in asylum applications not a backlog? When it is made up of ‘complex cases’ and of new applications which hadn’t been made at the time ministers promised to clear the backlog. Today, the Home Office has been chirping about its success in tackling illegal migration by announcing ‘the legacy asylum backlog target has been met with more than 112,000 asylum cases cleared in 2023 and small boat crossing arrivals down by 36 per cent’. The government’s efforts in 2023, in other words, did ‘not just clear the original 92,000 legacy asylum backlog, but exceed it.’ It has achieved this, it says, by hiring extra staff.
On the face of it, that looks a great feather in Rishi Sunak’s cap, given that he promised to clear the backlog in December 2022. But sadly, not all is quite what it seems. Closer reading reveals that the 92,000 ‘legacy’ cases (defined as applications made prior to 28 June 2022) have not actually all been cleared at all – there are still 4,500 ‘complex cases’ which have yet to be determined. Moreover, a large number of decisions were ‘non-substantive’ – where the application has not really been decided but which has been laid aside for technical reasons such as forms not being filled in on time. It is rather akin to Tony Blair’s target for reducing A&E waiting times, which some hospitals achieved by waving patients through quickly to a ‘clinical assessment unit’ – i.e. a corridor, where they continued to wait for treatment.
And then, of course, there are the entirely new asylum applications which have been filed this year. In the year to June 2023 a further 78,768 applications were made, and thousands more will have been made between then and 31 December even though we don’t yet have the full figures. Even if the government has succeeded in processing more applications than it has received this year that doesn’t entirely clear the backlog. The Home Office’s claim asserts that there is something special about cases submitted before 28 June 2022 – the ones it chooses to label ‘legacy cases’. Yet we now have a whole year’s more cases. If, in December 2022 we were calling any application filed prior to 28 June 2022 a legacy case, shouldn’t a legacy case now be defined as any application made before the end of June 2023?
As for the government’s other claim, to have reduced small boat crossings, this has issues of its own. While the number of small boat crossings has been lower in recent months – the government says there were 602 between 1 January and 28 December 2023 compared with 1,110 in the same period in 2022 – this is very dependent on the weather. The winter of 2023/24 so far has turned out to be fairly stormy. The real test will be if the number of crossings remains lower when the weather calms down and we have millpond conditions in the English Channel.
No one should be surprised if the flotillas recommence. In 2023 the government says that the success rate of asylum applications was 67 per cent, down from 76 per cent in 2022. In France it is more like 30 per cent. The discrepancy goes some way to explaining why so many people choose to cross the English Channel from one safe country to another.
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