§ Miss WiddecombeTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to his answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Lidington) of 23 March 2000,Official Report,column 672W, on asylum seekers, (a) for what reasons local authorities (i) claimed more than their gross expenditure and (ii) did not claim the full amount of their gross expenditure and (b) what estimate he has made of the cost to each local authority in the (1) 1999–2000 and (2) 2000–2001 financial years of 144W providing support to asylum seekers which they are unable to claim from the Home Office under the grant rules and which has been or will be met from their own funds; and if he will make a statement. [116691]
§ Mrs. Roche[pursuant to her reply, 23 March 2000, c. 672W]: The gross expenditure figure for East Sussex should read £279,979.
Data are available for the 1999–2000 financial year only in relation to the period 1 April 1999 to 5 December 1999. The data for 6 December 1999 to 31 March 2000 are not yet available in full, as not all claims have been received from local authorities. For the period 1 April 1999 to 5 December 1999, those local authorities who received more than their gross expenditure (as defined in the grant report rules) did so as a result of allowable commissioning costs. The grant rules covering this period entitle local authorities to claim the costs involved in commissioning premises to be used to accommodate asylum seekers. At the discretion of the Secretary of State, payment of up to £10 per week for each person supported in such premises was available. The provision was taken up only by a small number of authorities. In some cases, local authorities could not be reimbursed the full amount of their identified gross expenditure for a number of reasons—for example, because they incurred expenditure on items which were not covered by the grant rules or had exceeded the unit costs limits set by the grant report. No estimate has been made for the whole of 1999–2000 and 2000–01 of the cost to each local authority of providing support to asylum seekers for which they are unable to claim from the Home Office under the grant rules.
§ Miss WiddecombeTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department for what reason, in his Department's monthly asylum statistics published on 24 March, the number of asylum applicants(a) granted asylum or exceptional leave to remain and (b) refused, was listed as not available; on what data the figure for decisions in total was based, and for what reasons this could not be broken down by category; if monthly asylum statistics have been published previously without such a breakdown; and if he will make a statement. [116693]
§ Mrs. RocheThe figure for total asylum decisions in February was obtained from a manual count by caseworkers and is consistent with figures provided in previous months. A breakdown of decisions, by type, was not available in February due to the transition to a new computer system, the Asylum Cases Information Database (ACID). Although information on asylum decisions is satisfactorily recorded on this system for operational purposes, further quality checks are being carried out to ensure accurate statistical information is published.
It is expected that a full breakdown of the decisions will be published in due course. A preliminary analysis has shown that the breakdown of decisions, for cases considered under normal procedures, in February was consistent with that seen in recent months with a high proportion of refusals of asylum. Monthly asylum statistics have not been published previously without such a breakdown.