Press Release - Returning Failed Asylum
Applicants
19 July 2005
Sir John Bourn, head of the National Audit Office, reported
today that the Home Office’s Immigration and Nationality
Directorate has increased its capacity for removing failed asylum
applicants but the number of people removed or returning
voluntarily each month is still less than the number of
unsuccessful cases (Based on the period April to December 2004).
Over five years the Directorate increased the number of failed
asylum applicants returning to their country of origin or to safe
third countries by 35 per cent from 8,960 in 2000-01 to 12,110
excluding dependants (14,075 including dependants) in 2004-05.
Today’s report highlights a number of areas where further
improvements should be made, in particular the need to remove
failed asylum applicants as promptly as possible.
The National Audit Office estimates that at the end of May 2004
between 155,000 and 283,500 potentially removable failed asylum
applicants may have remained in the United Kingdom, of whom around
half went through the application process more than three years
previously. Between 1994 and May 2004, a maximum of 363,000
applications for asylum were unsuccessful. Over the same period the
Directorate reported that it had removed 79,500 failed asylum
applicants. Not all of the 283,500 applicants initially recorded as
unsuccessful and not removed will now be removable, for example
because they have subsequently been granted leave to remain or
enter (including those included under the Directorate’s October
2003 concession for families) or they are from countries which have
since joined the European Union. And some failed applications will
have left the United Kingdom of their own accord. At the end of May
2004, the Directorate’s database identified 155,000 failed
applicants as potentially removable from the United Kingdom, but
this excludes older cases yet to be removed and will also include
claimants who have left of their own accord. The Directorate has no
system for collecting information on their number but has started
electronic security checking of passengers departing from the
United Kingdom on certain routes.
The Directorate has significantly increased the amount of resources
devoted to enforcement. In 2003-04 the Directorate and Her
Majesty’s Prison Service spent a total of £300 million on
immigration enforcement, including the removal of failed asylum
applicants. This is a 60 per cent increase in cash terms on the
amount spent in 2001-02. In addition an estimated £308 million was
spent supporting failed asylum applicants awaiting removal from the
UK in 2003-04.
Whilst failed applicants may have no interest in leaving
voluntarily, the National Audit Office found only limited
championing of the assisted voluntary return option amongst the
Directorate’s local offices and removal teams. Since August 2004
the Directorate has been working to improve the availability of
information on voluntary return through its website, its staff and
others with whom asylum applicants may come into contact. Some 7
per cent of recorded returns in 2003-04 were of failed asylum
applicants who had chosen to leave the country and 16 per cent were
assisted voluntary returns. At around £1,100 per departure,
assisted voluntary returns cost less than the average figure of
£11,000 per enforced removal. Increasing the number of voluntary
departures by, for example, better promoting the options available
to those due for removal and by establishing better contacts with
community groups, could lead to savings of nearly £10 million for
every additional 1,000 asylum applicants choosing to return
voluntarily.
Delays and difficulty in obtaining travel documents have slowed up
the removal process. In the case of failed asylum applicants who
entered the country clandestinely and do not have passports or any
other identity papers, the Directorate must establish their
nationality and obtain emergency travel documents from the relevant
embassy. This has led to bottlenecks in the process. The
Directorate’s Documentation Unit has reduced the time taken to
submit applications to embassies from 17 days to an average of 7
days. The Government has been working to improve its arrangements
with foreign embassies but further improvements are possible within
the Directorate.
The enforced removal of failed applicants has been hindered by a
lack of effective management of cases from initial application to
removal. The National Audit Office found that the application,
support and enforcement processes had operated as largely separate
systems, leading to poor communication and coordination within the
Directorate thereby reducing the prospect of quick removal of newly
failed applicants. In a sample of cases turned down in 2004 only
three per cent of applicants were known to have left the country
within three months (21 per cent of the sample were from countries
for which travel documentation is not an issue). Based on its
analysis of the Directorate’s database the National Audit Office
found that unsuccessful applicants removed in the period June 2003
to May 2004 had been removed on average 403 days after their
appeals had been completed. At the end of 2004 the Directorate set
up two pilots for active case management and removal of failed
asylum applicants to achieve more rapid removals.
Detaining failed asylum applicants before their departure costs an
average of £5,800 for every removal. The detention estate is used
for detaining failed asylum applicants and other illegal immigrants
pending removal but also for people arrested at the border, asylum
applicants in the fast-track, and illegal immigrants transferred
from the prison estate. On average the Directorate has achieved
less than one removal per month for each bed in its detention
estate, with some people detained and then released or bailed as
the Directorate is unable to take their cases forward. The National
Audit Office calculates that if the number of people detained for
more than two months were reduced by ten per cent, and if the
number released or bailed after more than 14 days were also reduced
by ten per cent, some £15.5 million would be freed up for other
work. The Directorate introduced a new Detention Review Board in
May 2004 to re-organise the management of the detention estate and
assign clear responsibility for applicants detained long-term. To
meet the new target of the monthly rate of removals exceeding the
number of new unsuccessful applications by the end of 2005, will
require both a continuing reduction in the number of new asylum
applications and a further increase in the number of removals. The
Directorate has increased the capacity of its detention estate to
2,750 places by March 2005, which could enable an increase in
removals of some 40 per cent of the estimated increase required to
meet the new target. The Directorate will also need to increase the
number of removals not requiring detention and/or increase the
numbers of failed asylum applicants removed per bedspace in removal
centres.
Weaknesses in the Directorate’s contracts with companies for the
secure escort of failed applicants into detention and out of the
country have also contributed to delays in the removal process. The
Directorate has re-tendered these contracts and reduced the level
of delays caused by lack of availability of escorts.
Sir John Bourn said:
“The integrity of the asylum system
depends in part on returning failed applicants to their home
country in a timely fashion. The pool of failed applicants is
somewhere between 155,000 and 283,500, with the number of removals
and voluntary returns in 2004-05 being 12,110. The Immigration and
Nationality Directorate has made progress but needs to do a better
job to track and manage cases and do more to encourage failed
asylum applicants to return home voluntarily. Detaining failed
applicants increases the likelihood of successful removal, but it
is expensive and more efficient use could be made of such
facilities. Improvements in all these areas will be needed if the
Immigration and Nationality Directorate is to meet its new target
to achieve more removals than there are failed applicants in any
given month and to start reducing the backlog.”
Notes to editors
- The Immigration and Nationality Directorate, part of the Home
Office, is responsible for deciding asylum applications and for
returning failed applicants and other immigration offenders to
their country of origin or safe third countries. During 2004-05
12,110 principal asylum applicants were returned. The number of
unsuccessful asylum applications in 2004-05 was estimated at
25,845. In September 2004, the Government set the Directorate an
overall target that by the end of 2005 the monthly rate of removals
should exceed the number of new applicants predicted to be
unsuccessful. In addition to the removal of failed asylum
applicants, the Directorate removed some 9,300 other immigration
offenders from the United Kingdom as a result of an enforcement
action and 29,500 were refused entry to the country and
subsequently removed.
- It is difficult to estimate more reliably the number of failed
asylum applicants remaining in the country as the Directorate
introduced its database for collecting details of new applications
in April 2000, an unknown number of failed applicants depart from
the United Kingdom without contacting the authorities and an
unknown number of applicants make more than one application for
asylum.
- The Directorate spent £285 million in 2003-04 on supporting
voluntary return, detaining immigration offenders, enforcing
removal and other immigration enforcement work. HM Prison Service
spent £15 million on the detention of immigration offenders prior
to their removal. The Directorate’s management information systems
do not allow expenditure related solely to removing failed asylum
applicants to be calculated. These total costs and the resulting
unit cost estimates for 2003-04 were prepared by the Directorate
and their reasonableness was reviewed by the National Audit
Office.
- Of the £308 million spent supporting failed asylum applicants,
most was spent supporting an estimated 18,500 families with
dependant children who are entitled to support until they leave the
country, unless they fail to cooperate with their removal.
- Press notices and reports are available from the date of
publication on the National Audit Office website at www.nao.org.uk.
Hard copies can be obtained from The Stationery Office on 0845
7023474
- The Comptroller and Auditor General, Sir John Bourn, is the
head of the National Audit Office which employs some 800 staff. He
and the National Audit Office are totally independent of
Government. He certifies the accounts of all Government departments
and a wide range of other public sector bodies; and he has
statutory authority to report to Parliament on the economy,
efficiency and effectiveness with which departments and other
bodies have used their resources.
Press Notice 46/05
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