Migrants are being granted asylum in Britain despite not being entitled to protection because of catastrophic failures inside the Home Office, a damning United Nations audit has found.
In an extraordinary intervention, the UN’s refugee agency warned that Britain’s broken asylum system is now making mistakes in both directions — refusing protection to genuine refugees while handing it to people who do not qualify.
The investigation found that barely half of Home Office asylum decisions met the department’s own quality standards.
Just 52 per cent of cases assessed in 2023/24 passed the test — the worst performance ever recorded and a staggering collapse from 72 per cent the previous year.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees delivered a devastating verdict on the state of Britain’s asylum system.
This research indicates that there is a real risk that applicants are being refused despite being in need of international protection, and that applicants are being granted asylum even though they are not entitled to it,” the report warned.
The findings will pile fresh pressure on ministers over their handling of Britain’s borders after investigators uncovered a catalogue of basic failures in the way asylum claims are processed.
Researchers identified a repeated “failure to probe material facts”, an excessive reliance on closed questions and cases where interpreters condensed migrants’ answers rather than translating their full responses.
The UNHCR examined 30 asylum interviews and 30 separate case files, while directly observing another 30 interviews.
In almost a third of the interviews examined, the migrant’s full reasons for claiming asylum were still unclear by the time questioning had ended.
The report also raised fears that pressure on officials to accelerate decisions has resulted in cases being pushed through before they are properly prepared.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp seized on the findings, accusing the Government of losing control.
He said: “The United Nations, hardly a hostile witness, has told the Home Office that it is granting asylum to people who are not entitled to it.
Mr Philp pointed to the 58,000 people granted asylum or leave to remain over the past year — a rise of 10 per cent.
The Home Office has handed over the asylum system completely,” he declared.
One extraordinary case exposed in the audit involved an Afghan applicant claiming the Taliban had taken an interest in his father.
Asked why, the applicant replied: “I don’t know, maybe because of his life, his talent.”
When questioned about his father’s supposed talent, he answered: “He was a shopkeeper.”
The issue was never investigated further.
The chaos has also spilled into the appeals system, where 45 per cent of asylum appeals decided by the First-tier Tribunal in the year to March 2025 resulted in the Home Office’s original refusal being overturned.
The explosive report comes just days after a Home Office whistleblower claimed that “at best 1 per cent” of asylum seekers were genuine and alleged “massive fraud” was rife within the system.
The official, known only as J, said: “There’s almost no aspect of the asylum system that isn’t either a massive fraud or just really dysfunctional. Nothing works as it should.”
A Home Office spokesman said the department welcomed the UNHCR’s recognition of progress in training new decision-makers.
They added: “The Home Secretary is taking tough action to fix our broken immigration system by removing incentives that draw people here illegally and scaling up removals of those with no right to be in the UK.
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