Immigration and Asylum Bill (Hansard, 5 November 1999)

§ Lorna Fitzsimons
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if the cost of additional staff for the Support Agency described in point 368 of the Explanatory Notes to the Immigration and Asylum Bill was included in point 359; and what the estimated staff costs for the Support Agency are. [97139]

§ Mrs. Roche
The question refers to paragraphs in the Explanatory Notes, published on 9 February 1999. A further set of Explanatory Notes were published on 18 June 1999 to accompany the introduction of the Immigration and Asylum Bill into the House of Lords.
Paragraph 368 of the Explanatory Memorandum suggested that the Asylum Seekers Support Agency would require between 100–200 additional staff. Since then, further work has been done to identify the appropriate size of the body to administer the new support arrangements. We have also taken account of revised forecasts for 366W applications for asylum. Our latest estimates are that the new body to administer the support arrangements will need 512 full-time equivalent staff.
The costs of the staff were not included in the support costs listed in paragraph 359 of the Explanatory Memorandum. It is now expected that the staff costs will be of the order of £11.5 million per year.

§ Lorna Fitzsimons
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how the estimates in point 359 of the Explanatory Notes to the Immigration and Asylum Bill were determined; and what assumptions were made underlying those calculations. [97138]

§ Mrs. Roche
The question refers to a paragraph in the Explanatory Notes which were published on 9 February. A further set of Explanatory Notes were published on 18 June when the Immigration and Asylum Bill was introduced into the House of Lords.
A budget of £350 million for 1999–2000, £300 million for 2000–01, and £250 million for 2001–02 was provisionally allocated for asylum support costs in the Comprehensive Spending Review in July 1998. These figures were determined from the Asylum Costs model which calculates support costs on the basis of a number of assumptions including the number of asylum applications. Details of this model including its assumptions were set out in the document "Asylum Seeker Support—estimates of public expenditure" which was published on 22 March.