Governments departments are running the asylum system “without clear end-to-end leadership, shared objectives or agreed accountability”, a new report warns.
The Public Accounts Committee report, published today, says “responsibility remains fragmented” across the Home Office, Ministry of Justice and local government, and “there is no shared outcomes framework to guide decisions or manage the trade-offs between competing priorities in casework, appeals, removals, accommodation and support”.
It says senior officials "still cannot articulate what the system is collectively trying to achieve, or how success would be judged” which is “indefensible”.
The report says individual departments have pointed out that they operate under different pressures and budgets but argues this “only underlines the problem”.
The failure to join up work means "efforts to improve one part of the asylum system often create pressure in another,” the report finds. It notes that, for example, in 2023 the Home Office made nearly 76,000 initial asylum decisions – over four times as many as in 2022. However, this created new pressure at the appeals stage, "where limited legal and judicial capacity led to another backlog building".
In November, home secretary Shabana Mahmood announced a new asylum appeals body to "expand the capacity of the appeals system" as part of a sweeping set of asylum reforms that will be introduced through a new immigration and asylum bill.
The Home Office has also created a new asylum group and cross-departmental asylum system board to bring together policy, operational and commercial functions and strengthen coordination across government.
However, the report says the Home Office has "provided no clear explanation of how these new arrangements will operate in practice and departments do not yet share a clear, agreed understanding of what the asylum system is trying to achieve".
“Without clear accountability and shared, long-term goals, the government risks continuing to waste resources, repeat operational mistakes and pursue reforms without a common direction,” it adds.
The report asks the Home Office to agree a framework with HM Treasury, the MoJ and MHCLG "for how the end-to-end accountability for the asylum system operates in practice" no later than the end of 2026.
Other findings in the report include:
- Poor data quality and weak management information continue to prevent effective management of the asylum system and undermine parliament’s ability to assess performance.
- The Home Office has too often pursued major policy and operational change "without a realistic grip on delivery risks, costs or system-wide impacts". It says the consequences are visible across the system today in "costly missteps" such as acquiring Northeye, Bibby Stockholm and Scampton.
- The Home Office has not demonstrated it has the commercial capabilities needed to manage asylum accommodation effectively.
PAC chair Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown said: “Our report provides an end-to-end snapshot of the entire asylum system, and its findings paint a disturbing picture – at the time of our inquiry, control of it had been all but lost.
"The focus on short-term, reactive ‘fixes’ has left the government chasing after pressures pushed from one part of the system to the next. There is no clear strategy uniting these efforts, and engagement across departments and with local authorities is patchy at best.
"Given senior officials’ inability to articulate what the asylum system is collectively trying to achieve, it is no wonder such a directionless bureaucracy ends with people at the heart of it either left in limbo, or lost entirely.”
Responding to the findings, a Home Office spokesperson said: “Asylum claims are down, hotel use is falling and immigration enforcement activity is at the highest level on record – with the largest number of raids and arrests ever.
“We’ve tracked down and removed nearly 70,000 illegal migrants and foreign criminals since the government took office – a 41% increase and the highest level for a decade. Any asylum seekers who break their bail conditions by absconding will be tracked down and arrested."