Home Office backlogs: lessons to be learnt

Home Office backlogs - particularly in the asylum system - have been a concern about the department for around 30 years.

Governments come and go, and Parliaments come and go, but the fact of backlogs - the human suffering they cause, financial and other resources they waste, and general chaos they produce - persist.

This briefing gives particular focus to the asylum system where backlogs have been an especially dreadful reality for much of this period. It explains how bad policy creates, sustains and worsens backlogs; and how politicians must ultimately take responsibility for pursuing - and still pursuing - bad policies that do this.