Thread by @NicoleSykes_

Was honestly infuriating to work on this review of the costs the Home Office creates for itself and other government departments by making so many wrong initial decisions on asylum applications, and taking such a long time to do so (1/) 🧵

https://twitter.com/stand_for_all/status/1462362618149187584

Of the 14,600 initial asylum applications the Home Office rejects each year, 11,500 lodge appeals and around 3,700 of those appeals are successful. So mistakes have been made in the initial process.
Now if I made 3,700 mistakes each year, I’d be fired but... (2/)

So 🎯Key Point A : those mistakes cost £££.
Direct costs to Home Office admin of ~£4m a year
➕
Many times to that to HM Courts and Tribunals Service
➕
Legal aid (though this is complex and v limited) (3/)

But 🎯Key Point B: those mistakes waste time - 25 weeks on average.
That comes on top of the inordinate waits for initial decisions: 71k folks are waiting for an initial decision. There are around 30k applications a year. Read @refugeecouncil on this (4/) media.refugeecouncil.org.uk/wp-content/upl…

As the wait increases, the direct costs do too. The longer people wait for correct decisions, the longer the welfare, housing etc. costs involved.
But also the longer asylum seekers’ health and economic prospects are damaged. So here comes costs for the NHS and the Treasury (5/)

More than 60% of asylum seekers in the UK experience serious mental distress. Being refused asylum is (perhaps unsurprisingly) the strongest predictor of depression and anxiety within this community... (6/)

...and while refugees and asylum seekers are less likely to access NHS services than average, the mean annual total healthcare costs of an adult with serious mental illness is £4,989. So the costs to the NHS of poor Home Office decisions on asylum can quickly add up (7/)

Then there's the cost to the economy and Treasury. As the #LiftTheBan coalition has long stated, most asylum seekers are not permitted to work - with their estimates putting the cost at around £97m a year (8/) refugee-action.org.uk/wp-content/upl…

The evidence @ProBonoEcon collated suggests that the longer asylum seekers are stuck unable to work, the worse their long-term economic prospects. Wages, employment rates and ultimately tax reciepts are diminished as skills get depleted over time (as the graphic shows) (9/10)

So while we discuss how broken the asylum system is in the UK, let's not forget how many of the problems are created not in Calais but in Croydon and Whitehall. You can read the full analysis from @sadiashe, @ConsultOldfield and @jade_siu here
(10/10) probonoeconomics.com/an-unstable-en…