Team Blitz India
LONDON: Nearly 63,000 people who were waiting for their cases to be processed at the time of the general election are expected to be granted asylum by the Labour Government, an analysis has found.
The Refugee Council said the Government’s decision to scrap the plan to deport people to Rwanda and accelerate claims meant that the asylum backlog was forecast to be 118,063 at the start of 2025 – 59,000 cases lower than if the government had continued with the policy, The Guardian reported.
Figures show that there were 118,882 people in the backlog by the end of June 2024. Based on the grant rates in the year to that date the charity expects 62,801 people to be granted asylum.
Enver Solomon, the chief executive of the charity, said Labour had “inherited an asylum system that was utterly broken” and while “decisive early action has been taken to stop the system from falling over”, there needed to be a “comprehensive reform to create a fair, orderly and humane asylum system”.
Downing Street said Ministers were “committed” to ending the use of asylum hotels. Reports have claimed that the Home Office was considering reopening some previously closed by the Conservatives.
Labour had pledged in its manifesto to stop housing asylum seekers in taxpayer-funded hotels but was accused of seeking to use more. The Home Office is understood to be reviewing the hotels being used to house asylum seekers. However, the department would not confirm if it was seeking to use more or reopen any of those previously closed.
