Almost 6,000 asylum seekers are missing

ALMOST 6,000 asylum seekers have gone missing after having their applications withdrawn, the Home Office has admitted.

In a letter to the Commons home affairs committee, ministers Michael Tomlinson and Tom Pursglove said there were 5,598 rejected asylum seekers still in the UK. The Home Office is “taking steps to urgently re-establish contact with them”, they added.

They are among 17,000 asylum seekers whose claims have been withdrawn in the 12 months to September 2023 after they failed to attend appointments or respond to letters from the Home Office.

The number of withdrawn cases has quadrupled on the previous year, from 4,260. The surge has led to claims that they are being wiped off the list without being fully assessed to help meet Rishi Sunak’s target of clearing the “legacy” backlog of asylum cases older than June 2022 by the end of 2023.

Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, said: “This is a staggering admission that the Home Office has lost almost 6,000 asylum seekers and has no idea where they are.

“The fact that thousands of people have been allowed to effectively disappear into the underground economy or left vulnerable to exploitation by criminal gangs is yet more evidence of the shocking mismanagement and chaos in the asylum system.”

The admission comes after the two most senior mandarins in the Home Office earlier appeared before the committee and suggested they did not know where the 17,000 withdrawn asylum seekers were.

In their letter, Mr Tomlinson and Mr Pursglove said this was “erroneous” and provided a breakdown of the 17,000. A fifth (3,144) had left the UK and 2,643 had been granted some form of “lawful immigration status” after being initially rejected.

The applications of 5,931 were still being actively investigated but, they admitted, 5,598 were missing.

The ministers said the migrants could not legally work or access public or private services. “The Home Office has a dedicated tracing capability that works with the police, other government agencies and commercial companies to trace absconders,” they added.

The disclosures came as the Home Office was reprimanded by the statistics watchdog after the Government was accused of lying about clearing the legacy backlog of asylum cases.

Sir Robert Chote, the UK Statistics Authority chairman, warned the “episode may affect public trust” as he said it was “not surprising” the Government’s claim had been greeted with “some scepticism” and that some people felt misled.