The UK’s asylum system has no overall governance and is being hampered by the failure of successive governments to adopt a whole-system approach in which departments work together, the National Audit Office has said.
A new report from the public spending watchdog calculates that the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice spent a combined £4.9bn on asylum in 2024-25, but argues significant reform is required.
The NAO report says that efforts to improve the system in recent years have often been “short-term and narrowly focused on one area of the system”, such as reaction to large backlogs and sharply increasing costs.
It says increases in the speed of application-processing have sometimes come at the expense of the quality of decisions, and improvements in one area have “shunted problems elsewhere”.
“Without a whole-system view and clear, agreed outcomes there has been no firm basis for the government departments and other bodies in the system to work together in pursuit of an efficient and sustainable system,” the report says.
It finds areas of good practice, with “many examples of officials taking action to address the root causes of quality failures, understand and model parts of the system to improve productivity, and work across organisational boundaries”.
But it describes those changes as “somewhat piecemeal and not yet fully embedded” and says the current system is still “hampered by a lack of robust, interoperable data to support high quality decision-making at each stage”.
The report notes that data availability, data quality, and IT systems working together still pose major challenges to managing the asylum system effectively. It says it “remains impossible” to track individuals or cases across Home Office, HM Courts and Tribunals Service and local authority systems using a unique identifier.
The NAO also points to a failure to recognise that, in a “significant number of cases” it is not possible to return asylum seekers whose claims have been refused and to adopt a “realistic approach”.
Spike in applications
According to the Home Office, more than 400,000 people have claimed asylum in the UK since 2021, compared to 150,000 over the period from 2011-15. In excess of 100,000 people currently live in taxpayer-funded asylum accommodation.
Today’s NAO report includes an analysis of a sample of 5,000 people who made an initial asylum claim in January 2023. It found that 35% of the sample group have so far been granted protection and 9% have been removed from the UK following unsuccessful asylum applications. The claims of the remaining 56% of the cohort are unresolved.
The NAO said that of the group whose claims are unresolved, 25% are awaiting an appeal decision.
It said the asylum system’s effectiveness and value for money are “undermined” because of “fundamental barriers” that mean people seeking asylum spend extended periods waiting in the system.
New policies ‘will take time to introduce’
The report recognises recent asylum policy announcements, made by new home secretary Shabana Mahmood, including the establishment of a new asylum appeals body. But it cautions that many of the reforms will take time and parliamentary approval to introduce.
Among its recommendations, the NAO has called on ministers to present a “strategic plan” for implementing the proposed asylum model to parliament, publish annual progress assessments and establish a “lasting governance framework”.
It is also calling on ministers to build “joined-up policy design” across departments and ensure all interventions have an evidence base, cost-benefit analysis, and evaluation plan.
Additionally, the report proposes the development of a “long-term data blueprint” to address poor data quality, the lack of a single reliable record, and identify technical and behavioural changes needed to improve system efficiency.
NAO head Gareth Davies said that in its future audit work the watchdog would be looking for evidence that the government is moving away from short-term, reactive fixes towards a sustainable whole-system approach.
“Our analysis shows that the efforts of successive governments to improve the efficiency of the asylum system have often been short-term and narrowly focused, reacting to backlogs and rising costs,” he said.
“Successfully implementing the new asylum model recently announced by the home secretary will require effective action on the bottlenecks in the current system using better quality data and streamlined decision-making.”
Public Accounts Committee chair Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown said an effective asylum system needed to be able to process and implement decisions on claims in a timely and appropriate manner.
However, he said the current system is “far from efficient”, with lengthy delays and backlogs, and “rising yet avoidable costs”.
Clifton-Brown said those factors have led to taxpayers’ money being wasted, harm being caused to asylum seekers’ welfare and negative impact on government’s ability to meet its duty to its citizens.
“If the new asylum model is to be successfully implemented, government must take a joined-up and strategic approach to move towards a sustainable system, which improves outcomes for all,” he said. “I have no doubt that more robust, better-quality data will be key.”
Civil Service World sought a Home Office response. It had not provided one at the time of publication.