Free Movement Weekly Immigration Newsletter #83

Welcome to the weekly Free Movement newsletter! 

A lot has happened in the last week. I am going to focus on statistics because there are some important omissions which are really key to everything else that is going on. In 2022/23 72% of Home Office decisions were passing their own internal quality checks. In 2023/24 that had dropped to an absolutely woeful 52%. And last week the expected update did not materialise at all.

The Home Office publishes statistics on the quality of its decisions as determined through internal checks. This data is published in August (see e.g. 2023 and 2024 – it is table ADQ_01A in the immigration and protection data) for the financial year immediately preceding it, so last week we should have seen data for 2024/25. The data was not published. 

We are also missing the Home Office data on appeals which has not been updated since the beginning of 2023. This gives a much more detailed breakdown than the tribunal’s statistics, and contains important information such as nationality. As an example of why this is important – the initial decision grant rate for Afghan nationals dropped from 96% to 40% in the space of a year. How many of those decisions is the Home Office withdrawing at appeal stage, after deciding that they are unsustainable? How many Afghan nationals are succeeding at appeal? We have no idea, because the Home Office has stopped publishing the data. 

I am spelling this out very clearly mainly for the parliamentarians and journalists who are reading, as it is very easy to get distracted by the size of the asylum appeals backlog from what is actually the root cause of that problem, which is poor decision making by the Home Office. This is also where a solution is most needed, otherwise the Home Office will continue to pour bad decisions into whatever process is used to challenge them. Questions need to be asked of the Home Office and they must be held accountable.

On Free Movement, I wrote up a planning law case, largely to counteract the misinformation out there. This is a story of what certainly appeared to be a dying hotel in Epping which entered into a contract to provide asylum accommodation to ensure its financial stability. Largely because of the very specific history of discussions around planning permission, interim relief was granted to the council to stop this use pending the outcome of the main proceedings. 

Elsewhere on the blog, I combed through 83 pages of guidance on the new UK/France scheme for those who want to come to the UK and have written up a detailed briefing which I think will be useful to those helping people apply under the scheme, as well as understanding where legal challenges may arise. BID has published a useful guide for people who are detained in the UK under the returns elements of the scheme.

For everything else on Free Movement and elsewhere, read on.

Cheers, Sonia

What we’re reading

At 19 I had to flee my country, afraid for my life – without even saying goodbye to my family – The Guardian, 20 August

Reform councillor works on asylum claims for Home Office, investigation reveals – The Guardian, 25 August

UK reaches migrants return deal with Iraq – InfoMigrants, 20 August

Police clash with protesters as asylum hotel demonstrations take place in UK – The Guardian, 23 August

The Truth About Immigration, Refugees and People Seeking Asylum – Liverpool City Council, 20 August

‘Please don’t move us’: Epping asylum seeker speaks to ITV News after High Court ruling – ITV News, 20 August

‘Once-in-a-lifetime chance’: Gaza scholars await UK evacuation to pursue studies – BBC News, 25 August

Home Office promises ‘big surge’ in asylum hotel closures in new year – The Guardian, 25 August