Bombshell report reveals Home Office ‘doesn’t know’ how many asylum seekers have absconded | UK | News
The Home Office does not know how many asylum seekers have gone missing since entering the UK, a new report has revealed. The National Audit Office (NAO) report, released on Monday 10 December, revealed many worrying issues with the country’s asylum process; one of which was massive inefficiencies, “waste of public funds” and a series of “short-term, reactive” Government policies that transferred rather than solved problems.
Monday’s report also found that the asylum system is costing taxpayers an eye-watering £4.9bn in 2024-25, mainly from the provision of taxpayer-funded migrant hotels and other accommodation. However, this figure does not include major expenses such as legal aid for asylum seekers’ lawyers and the costs incurred by local councils responsible for supporting successful applicants; This means the real figure could be significantly higher.
“We found several examples of data that could help the government better understand outcomes within the asylum system that are not routinely collected or fail to provide,” the watchdog said in its report.
He added: “For example, the Home Office did not have full data on the number of people escaping the asylum system.”
The spending watchdog examined a sample of 5,000 asylum claims made in January 2020 as part of its analysis. Since then, more than a third of these asylum seekers (35% or 1,619) have been granted some form of protection such as refugee status, while 9% (452) have been removed from the country. But more than half (56% or 2,812) still have no final outcome in their cases.
The majority of this final figure (2,021 out of 2,812) remained “in limbo” with no appeal filed.
“Their claims have been dismissed, but their cases remain in the system unresolved, and that’s because of the difficulties of removal,” NAO chief analyst Ruth Kelly told reporters.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said the NAO report showed “the Home Office may have lost track of thousands of illegal immigrants seeking asylum”, adding: “Labour has lost control of our borders [..] and the asylum system.
“Hard-working taxpayers spend billions of dollars to provide accommodation for illegal immigrants seeking asylum. This Government is not even capable of deporting everyone whose claims are unsuccessful. The system is a complete farce.”
The NAO also found that it was impossible to track individual cases throughout the entire asylum process as there was no “unique asylum case identifier” shared by the Home Office, court services and local government computer systems.
The lack of other types of accommodation also means that many asylum seekers whose cases are not closed are being accommodated in hotels. The cost of this accommodation in the 2024-25 financial year was £2.7bn.
The NAO report also criticized how recent governments have dealt with a surge in small boat sailings that began in 2018, saying: “Interventions have tended to be reactive and focused on solving an immediate problem in just one part of the system, such as entry or initial decisions, without a clear view of the impact on other parts.”
A Home Office spokesman said in a statement: “The Home Secretary recently announced the most sweeping changes to the asylum system in a generation to tackle the problems identified in this report.
“We are already making progress – nearly 50,000 people who have no right to be here have been eliminated, there has been a 63% increase in illegal worker arrests and more than 21,000 small boat crossing attempts have been foiled so far this year.
“Our new reforms will restore order and control, remove incentives encouraging people to come to the UK illegally and increase deportations of those who have no right to be here.”
