Stephen Kinnock – 2022 Parliamentary Question on the Asylum Application Backlog

The parliamentary question asked by Stephen Kinnock, the Labour MP for Aberavon, in the House of Commons on 14 November 2022.

Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)

The Nationality and Borders Act 2022 establishes a new category of asylum seekers that the Government claim are not permitted to claim asylum in Britain and should therefore be removed, but because the Government have failed to secure a returns agreement with France, and because their Rwanda policy is completely unworkable, 16,000 people in this category have been stuck in limbo waiting an additional six months for a decision, at huge cost to the British taxpayer. Of those 16,000 waiting in limbo, only 21 have been returned since the Act came into force. Do Ministers therefore accept that their own legislation is adding further delays, cost, chaos and confusion to an already broken system while doing next and nothing to remove failed asylum seekers who have no right to be here?

Suella Braverman

I find it staggering that Labour Members seem to love complaining about the system but when we introduced laws to fix it, what did they do? They opposed them every step of the way. We wanted to make it easier to deport foreign national offenders; Labour voted against it. We wanted to fix our asylum system; Labour voted against it. We secured a ground-breaking agreement with Rwanda; Labour would scrap it. Labour Members are very good at complaining, but they have absolutely no solution at all.