Bombshell report reveals Home Office ‘does not know’ what number of asylum seekers have absconded | UK | News | EUROtoday

The Home Office doesn’t know what number of asylum seekers have gone lacking since coming into the UK, a damning new report has revealed. The National Audit Office’s (NAO) report, revealed on Monday (December 10), has uncovered a number of worrying points with the nation’s asylum course of, one suffering from main inefficiencies, “wasted public funds” and a string of “short-term, reactive” Government insurance policies which have transferred issues, not mounted them.

Monday’s report additionally revealed that the asylum system value the taxpayer an eyewatering £4.9 billion in 2024-25, primarily for offering taxpayer-funded migrant motels and different lodging. However, this determine doesn’t embrace main expenditures, similar to authorized help for asylum seekers’ attorneys and the prices incurred by native councils once they assume accountability for supporting profitable claimants, which means the true determine may very well be considerably greater.

“We found several examples of data that could help the Government better understand outcomes within the asylum system that were not routinely being collected, or which they could not provide,” the watchdog mentioned in its report.

It added: “For example the Home Office did not hold complete data on the number who absconded from the asylum system”.

As a part of its evaluation, the spending watchdog examined a pattern of 5,000 asylum claims lodged in January 2020. Since then, over a 3rd (35%, or 1,619) of these asylum seekers had been given some type of safety, similar to refugee standing, whereas 9% (452) had been faraway from the nation. However, over half (56% or 2,812) nonetheless didn’t have a remaining final result of their case.

Most of this remaining determine (2,021 out of the two,812) remained in “limbo”, with no attraction lodged.

“They’ve had their claim refused, but they’re staying in the system with their case unresolved, and that’s because of the difficulties in removal,” the NAO’s chief analyst, Ruth Kelly, advised reporters.

Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp has mentioned the NAO’s report confirmed “the Home Office is likely to have lost track of thousands of illegal immigrants who have claimed asylum”, including: “Labour has lost control of our borders [..] and the asylum system.

“Hard-working taxpayers are shelling out billions to fund lodging for unlawful immigrants who declare asylum. This Government is not even capable of deport all these whose claims fail. The system is a farce.”

The NAO also found that it was impossible to track individual cases through the whole asylum process because there is no “distinctive asylum case identifier” shared by the Home Office, court service and local authority computer systems.

A shortage of other types of accommodation also means that large numbers of asylum seekers whose cases are not closed are being housed in hotels. The cost of this accommodation in the 2024-25 financial year was £2.7 billion.

The NAO’s report also criticised how recent governments have dealt with the surge in small boat crossings that began in 2018, saying: “Interventions have tended to be reactive and centered on fixing an pressing drawback in a single a part of the system solely, similar to consumption or preliminary selections, with out a clear view of the results on different elements”.

In a statement, a Home Office spokesperson said: “The Home Secretary not too long ago introduced probably the most sweeping adjustments to the asylum system in a technology to take care of the issues outlined on this report.

“We are already making progress – with nearly 50,000 people with no right to be here removed, a 63% rise in illegal working arrests and over 21,000 small boat crossing attempts prevented so far this year.

“Our new reforms will restore order and management, take away the incentives which draw folks to come back to the UK illegally and enhance removals of these with no proper to be right here.”