Conclusion: How the government can design better asylum policy

Asylum is a chronic policy problem facing the UK and one which successive governments have struggled to manage. Case backlogs have grown and shrunk, costing the government more money and leading to poor outcomes for the people in search of protection. New routes into the country have become popular, boosting unsafe and uncontrolled migration. Public services have provided disjointed and sometimes inefficient support to those who reach the UK. Ministers, across governments and parliaments, have pursued policy in line with ill-founded political assumptions sooner than they have heeded the evidence of what works. 

The salience of asylum among the British electorate has increased, spurring politicians into action while polarising what people expect of government. Policy has been blown by political winds, leaving little to no consensus (within the UK as well as in Europe) on how to handle the large numbers of people arriving in Europe to seek protection. And this is all happening in a context in which those numbers are set to rise in the near future. 

This report has sought to examine the reasons for this malaise. Its recommendations are aimed at helping policy makers learn from why designing workable, effective policy on asylum has proven so difficult for so many previous administrations, and what could be done to improve this. Doing so will not only help the UK, saving money and asserting greater control over a politically difficult policy area, but also offer a fairer, safer system for the many thousands of people seeking protection here each year.