Asylum Seekers (Hansard, 16 July 2003)

§ Beverley Hughes

(a) Asylum

The average time between an asylum application and initial decision was six months for initial decisions made in the financial year 2002–03, compared with 20 months for April 1997. This has been calculated using all cases for which data are available, including older cases decided as part of the reduction of the number of outstanding cases, as well as new cases decided as part of normal work in progress.

Information on the proportion of cases decided, up to and including final appeal, within six months, will be published in the Home Office's Annual Report in order to report on the Public Service Agreement (PSA) target 7 published in July 2002. Due to the nature of the target, performance data will not be available until more than six months following the relevant financial year. For example (subject to data quality) it is planned that performance against financial year 2003–04 will be reported at the end of November 2004, although provisional figures for applications made between April 2003 and September 2003 will be available earlier.

Provisional data show that 73 per cent. of applications received in the period April to December 2002 had initial decisions reached and served within two months. 42 per cent. of asylum appeals received by the Immigration Appellant Authority in the period April to December 2002 were determined within 17 weeks (including those appeals also dealt with by the second tier of the IAA).

Information on the proportion of new substantive applications with initial decisions made and served within two months, and information on the proportion of appeals received by the IAA which are dealt with within four months, is published in the quarterly asylum statistics, copies of which are available from the Library, published at http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/ immigration 1. html

(b) Indefinite leave to remain (settlement)

There are no published data on decision times to determine applications for settlement. Our aim is to decide all straightforward applications within three weeks. Currently straightforward applications are being decided on initial consideration within three—four weeks on average. Most applications that cannot be decided 390W on initial consideration are being decided within six months but because of the high intake there are some that are taking around 12 months to decide.

Information on the current waiting times for citizenship applications are available on the Immigration and Nationality Directorate website www.ind.homeoffice. gov.uk/default.asp?Pageld = 16, and is periodically updated. As at July 2003 the average length of time for a citizenship application to be processed in nine months.