The scale of Labour’s new asylum backlog has been laid bare in new figures revealing a massive jump in the number of appeals waiting to be heard by immigration judges.
Figures from the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) showed the backlog in the First-tier Tribunal Immigration and Asylum Chamber increased by 68 per cent year-on-year to 151,767 at the end of March.
It was up from 90,389 a year earlier.
The total included 87,450 asylum appeals, up 72 per cent from just under 51,000 a year earlier, and 30,867 human rights cases, up from 22,000.
The new backlog is rocketing after Labour moved to clear cases which had been mounting up at an earlier point in the system.
Asylum seekers whose claims are rejected by the Home Office apply to the tribunal in a bid to get the ruling overturned.
But Labour’s measures have simply moved the backlog from the Home Office to the courts.
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The MoJ official data indicated the soaring backlog was ‘due to the Home Office’s work to tackle the backlog of legacy asylum claims’.
It comes just days after MPs on the Commons’ Public Accounts Committee said the Government’s asylum reforms had led to ‘repeatedly shifting backlogs rather than reducing them’.
Their critical report singled out Labour’s drive to clear the initial decisions backlog and said it had simply led to ‘new bottlenecks’ being created in the asylum appeal courts.
In the wake of the new figures Shadow Justice Secretary Nick Timothy said: ‘The court and tribunal backlogs have become completely unacceptable.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has been accused by MPs of a ‘lack of realism’ over her plans to reform the asylum appeal system
‘The Conservatives would scrap the immigration tribunal and restore control over our border to elected ministers.’
He added that Britain’s asylum system had granted too much power to lawyers to influence the outcome of cases, rather than the elected government.
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Mr Timothy said: ‘Too much government decision-making is now effectively outsourced to courts and tribunals.
‘From deporting illegal immigrants to welfare claims, lawyers are blocking this country’s ability to get things done.’
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has pledged to replace the lower asylum courts with a new independent appeals body.
But this week’s PAC report said her plan suffered from a ‘lack of realism’.
No further details about the reforms have been published by the Home Office since they were announced last year, as Labour backbenchers threaten to rebel over the tougher elements in Ms Mahmood’s plan.
