ASYLUM caseworkers in the Home Office are instructed to reject more claims than grant, a whistleblower revealed today in a shocking exposé that has triggered fresh calls for reform. 

Writing anonymously in the Guardian, the former asylum caseworker accused the Home Office of failing refugees and called for “profound reform” of the system. 

The rare insight into the decision-making process points to a culture of indifference where undertrained staff are subjected to “unreasonable management pressures,” making it difficult for them to “make correct decisions in asylum cases.”

Difficult cases were often discarded, the former caseworker said, leaving the claimant in “limbo” until another officer was assigned to it. 

A lack of accountability also meant decision letters were sent out with “severe mistakes, including clear factual errors,” they added. 

“I saw letters with obviously pasted-in case law specific to entirely different countries than the claimant’s.”

They said that these failures go some way towards explaining why almost half of refusals are successfully overturned at appeal. 

Most shockingly, the whistleblower said that trainers had told caseworkers they would be “expected to produce more refusals than grants: one of the criteria on which managers would judge our success.”

The damning account has sparked outrage from refugee rights groups and renewed calls for “root-and-branch reform” of the asylum system. 

“This confirms everything we have been saying for years about what’s going wrong with asylum decision-making,” Freedom from Torture chief executive Sonya Sceats told the Morning Star. 

“There’s been underinvestment in the system, the caseworkers are not at the level of qualification which you should really be requiring for the kind of life and death decisions that they are taking.”

Ms Sceats added that the culture of refusal “makes a mockery of the UK’s obligations to ensure that we are offering protection to those who meet the international definition of a refugee.”

Refugee Council head of advocacy Andy Hewett said that the article pointed to serious shortcomings in the decision-making process. 

“We have long been concerned about the quality of asylum decision-making, as evidenced, for example, by just how many refusals are overturned at appeal,” he said.

“That so many refugees have to rely on the courts to be granted protection is indicative of a system that is clearly not working.”

Bail for Immigration Detainees research and policy co-ordinator Rudy Schulkind said that the account reveals how “overworked staff without any formal legal education are pushed to meet impossibly demanding targets, within a culture of refusal set by managers.”

“The fact that a higher rate of refusals is one of the criteria on which a caseworker’s success is judged displays a chilling indifference to human suffering.

“The Home Secretary constantly tells us she wants to fix a ‘broken’ asylum system. If that were true, she should focus on the problems in her own department rather than pointing fingers at migrants and their legal representatives.”