Home Office plans to use questionnaires to clear asylum backlog

Exclusive: Claimants will have to answer in English and will have only 20 days to respond or face rejection

Plans to cut the asylum backlog by sending questionnaires to refugees instead of conducting official interviews will demand that claimants reply in English within 20 working days or risk refusal, a leaked document shows.

The Home Office will on Thursday begin sending out the 11-page document to about 12,000 people from Afghanistan, Eritrea, Libya, Syria and Yemen as part of Rishi Sunak’s plans to cut the 92,000 “legacy backlog” of asylum claimants.