Home Office ‘loses’ 17,000 asylum seekers registered in Britain

Photograph: Tolga Akmen/EPA

The Home Office does not know the whereabouts of 17,000 asylum seekers whose claims have been marked as withdrawn, officials have admitted.

Amid a stalled Rwanda deportation scheme and spiralling costs for housing people seeking refuge in hotels, senior civil servants in the department confirmed that marking those claims as “withdrawn” would help hit Rishi Sunak’s target of reducing the “legacy backlog” by the end of this year.

The disclosure emerged an hour before the prime minister was accused by Keir Starmer of facing an “open revolt” from the Tories after “losing control of the borders”.

At a meeting of the home affairs select committee the Conservative MP Tim Loughton asked senior civil servants about the government’s plans to clear 91,000 “legacy” asylum claims submitted before June 2022.

Loughton, the former children’s minister, questioned why 17,316 asylum claims – reflecting a 307% annual increase – had been withdrawn in the year to September 2023 at a time when the government was attempting to drive down the backlog. “Is this just fortuitous?” he asked.

Simon Ridley, the interim second permanent secretary at the Home Office, said it as not fortuitous. “In dealing with a lot of older cases there have been some of those people who have absconded at that point,” he said.

Asked by Loughton if he had any idea where those 17,316 people were, Ridley said: “I don’t think we know where those people are, no.”

The permanent secretary at the Home Office, Sir Matthew Rycroft, told MPs that officials were currently in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, as they put the “finishing touches” to a new immigration deal, after the supreme court ruled against the government’s first agreement which would have sent asylum seekers on a one-way trip to the east African nation.

Committee members asked how much more UK taxpayers should expect to pay for the scheme after handing over £140m to the Rwandan regime since April 2022.

Rycroft said more cash could be paid but would not say if any additional payments had since been made, instead saying ministers had decided they would not reveal that information until the department’s annual report in the summer.

When it was put to him that the Home Office itself published an impact assessment putting the cost per deported person at £169,000, Rycroft accepted that that was the figure in the document, but said the Home Office did not accept it as accurate because it was based on estimates.

He also claimed that he did not have a figure for the number of Rwandan people the government might have to accept under a clause in the deal, and could not give any details about alternative plans to the Rwandan deal if it could not be implemented.

Following exchanges with the committee on Channel crossings and removing refused asylum seekers from the UK, where Rycroft and Ridley were unable to answer detailed questions, the committee chair, Dame Diana Johnson, asked: “Do we have any figures about anything?”

The Conservative committee member Lee Anderson said: “I find this absolutely staggering that the big boss hasn’t got a clue, not just on this question, but nearly every other question we’ve asked today. Why is that?”

“Mr Ridley is looking for the numbers and we will send them to you,” Rycroft replied.

At prime minister’s questions, Starmer said Sunak has the “reverse Midas touch”, adding: “On their watch migration has just trebled and he is giving the House a lecture about targets. He is lost in la la land. There can be few experiences more haunting for the members opposite than hearing this prime minister claim that he is going to sort out a problem.”

Sunak defended his record and claimed the “toughest action ever taken to reduce legal migration” had “yet to be felt”.