Hilary Benn – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Hilary Benn on 2014-05-01.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many (a) asylum seekers and (b) refugees from Syria have applied for leave to remain since the start of the Syrian conflict; and how many such people have been granted leave to remain.

James Brokenshire

The published available figures only relate to asylum seekers.

The latest published Home Office data shows that between 1 April 2011 and 31
December 2013 there were 3,796 applications for asylum from Syrian nationals
(including main applicants and their dependants) in the UK. During the same
period, 2,507 Syrian nationals and dependants were granted leave to remain in
the UK, including asylum, humanitarian protection or discretionary leave. These
grant decisions do not all necessarily relate to applications made in the same
period. In addition, given the need to give each asylum claim careful
consideration on its merits, not all the asylum applications made during that
period will have received a decision during that time.

Eurostat data based on provisional management information shows that between 1
April 2011 and 28 February 2014 there were 4,105 applications for asylum from
Syrian nationals (including main applicants and their dependants) in the UK.
Eurostat data on grants of asylum are only available annually. There are some
definitional differences between National Statistics published by the Home
Office on a quarterly basis and monthly figures published by Eurostat.