§ Mr. LidingtonTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement on his plans to reduce the backlog of asylum applications to frictional levels by April; what he estimates will be the size of the backlog in April; and when he estimates that the backlog will be cleared. [148822]
§ Mrs. RocheWe have substantially increased resources to the Immigration and Nationality Directorate (IND), which has enabled an additional 500 asylum decision-makers to be recruited, and as a result the backlog has fallen for each of the last 11 months.
IND estimates that a frictional level of work is likely to be in the range 25,000–35,000 cases awaiting initial decision, depending on the level of intake, the nationality mix of the intake and external factors (for example, conflicts or civil unrest) which may mean certain groups of cases cannot be substantively considered at a particular time.
Subject to these factors, we expect the backlog to reduce to close to frictional levels during April.