Huge rise in unresolved asylum cases revealed

The Guardian – Labour’s record on tackling asylum faces a fresh onslaught today over figures that show a new backlog of 30,000 cases and a warning by the government’s immigration watchdog that its targets are currently “unachievable”.

John Vine also makes clear that a special five-year exercise which began in 2006 to clear the legacy of 450,000 unresolved asylum cases is now unlikely to meet its July 2011 target completion date. The setbacks mean that despite progress the Labour government will go into the ­general election campaign unable to claim that the asylum system has been fixed after John Reid famously declared the Home Office’s immigration directorate “unfit for purpose” in May 2006.

The report from Vine, his first on ­asylum as the UK Border Agency’s independent inspector, says there is no belief among frontline immigration staff that their official target of resolving 90% of new asylum applications within six months by the end of next year is achievable.

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