§ Lord Aveburyasked Her Majesty's Government:
How many asylum appeals have been received by the Appeals Support Section of the Immigration and Nationality Department since the beginning of 2000 to the latest convenient date; how many have been sent to the Immigration Appellate Authority over the same period; what is the average length of time between these events; and whether they have established any target for this interval. [HL22]
§ The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Rooker)Provisional data indicate that between January 2000 and April 2001, 88,005 asylum appeals have been received by the Immigration and Nationality Directorate (IND) and in the same period 43,040 appeals have been passed to the Immigration Appellate Authority (IAA). The date on which appeals are received in the Appeals Support Section is not recorded by data from the IAA's IRIS database indicate that for the year ending March 2001 the average time from receipt of an asylum appeal in IND (which will not necessarily be the same as the date of its receipt in ASS) to receipt in the IAA was seven weeks. No formal target has been set for the time in which appeals should be sent from IND to the IAA.