Labour has ‘all but lost control' of the asylum system, a damning report warns today.
The House of Commons' public accounts committee uncovered a ‘disturbing picture' of never-ending crisis, and blasted the Government for ‘shocking' oversights.
Demanding a major shake-up of the asylum system, MPs found the Home Office remains ‘at risk of repeating past failures' within a ‘directionless bureaucracy'.
MPs expressed dismay at the Home Office's admission that according to most recent data – which is now three years out of date – at least 41,000 failed asylum seekers are awaiting deportation.
The Home Office does not know how many failed asylum seekers have absconded or left the country voluntarily – which the committee condemned as a ‘shocking and unacceptable state of affairs'.
‘Basic information we would reasonably expect to see, such as the number of absconders or number of repeated appeals, is incomplete, inconsistent or simply unavailable,' the report said.
MPs demanded a ‘complete overhaul' of the way the Home Office deals with failed asylum seekers.
They called for a formal, up-to-date estimate of how many are in Britain, how many have absconded, what action the Home Office will take to trace them and a ‘timescale in which it estimates it will deport most of them'.
Committee chairman Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown MP 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.'
He added: ‘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.'
The asylum system was ‘failing to cope in the face of severe pressure', the committee said.
The report said asylum reforms had led to ‘repeatedly shifting backlogs rather than reducing them'.
In particular, Labour's drive to clear a backlog in the number of initial asylum applications had simply led to a ‘new bottlenecks' being created in the asylum appeal courts.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood's pledge to replace asylum courts with a new independent appeals body suffers from a ‘lack of realism', the report went on.
It also condemned ‘obscene' profits made by suppliers of asylum accommodation, as highlighted in a separate inquiry by the home affairs select committee last year.
Senior officials had been unable to state what they were aiming to achieve in the asylum system – which the report describes as ‘indefensible'.
MPs found ‘no evidence' the Government learns lessons from earlier mistakes, which means it is at ‘continued risk of repeating past failures'.
There were 93,500 asylum claims lodged in Britain in the year to March, down from a record 106,000 in the previous 12 months but more than double pre-pandemic levels.
A sampling exercise carried out by the National Audit Office, published in December, looked at 5,000 asylum seekers who lodged their claims in January 2023 and found 41 per cent were still ‘in limbo' with cases unresolved.
In all, £4.9billion was spent on asylum by the Government in 2024-25.
Ministers have announced an ‘entirely new asylum model' which will aim to cut spending by £1billion a year by 2028-29, but the committee found there is still no clear plan.A Home Office spokesman 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 per cent increase.
‘Any asylum seekers who break their bail conditions by absconding will be tracked down and arrested.'
