Tories condemn asylum cases backlog

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Shadow home secretary David Davis said Government "incompetence" meant there was effectively a "stealth amnesty".

The chief executive of the Border and Immigration Agency Lin Homer gave the figures in a letter to the chair of the Home Affairs Committee Keith Vaz.

She said officials were on course to clear the backlog in 2011 and were speeding up the process.

Previous home secretary John Reid announced the scale of the backlog in July last year.

He pointed out that the figure referred to case files, rather than individuals, and said they were "riddled with duplication and errors".

Ms Homer said: "To date we have concluded around 52,000 cases, of which about 16,000 have led to removals, 19,000 have led to grants of leave and 17,000 have been closed due to previously erroneous or duplicate records...

"Now that the process has been put into operation, the number of cases being concluded is increasing. From July to November this year 29,000 cases were concluded and we will continue to escalate performance. We remain confident that we are on track to conclude the cases by September 2011."

Mr Davis said: "After 18 months' effort and on their own numbers the Government can still only claim to have removed 3% of the backlog.

"At this rate it will take decades to remove the backlog, by which time we will have another backlog since the Government is also failing to meet its target of removing more failed asylum seekers than arrive."