CAMPAIGNERS warned today that the people behind the asylum-seeker numbers must not be lost sight of, as MPs found the system to be “on the brink of collapse.”

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said the Home Office has focused on short-term fixes without a clear strategy, and that it is “shocking and unacceptable” that ministers do not know where all failed asylum-seekers are in the country. 

The Home Office told the committee it knows where the “vast majority” of failed asylum-seekers are.

Committee chairman Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown said the report painted “a disturbing picture,” with “no clear strategy uniting these efforts” and engagement with local authorities “patchy at best.” 

He said: “Such a directionless bureaucracy ends with people at the heart of it either left in limbo, or lost entirely.”

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood’s plans include making refugee status temporary and subject to review every 30 months. 

Labour has also vowed to end the use of asylum hotels by the end of the current parliament, though the PAC said past attempts to use alternative sites have proved difficult.

Freedom from Torture’s Natasha Tsangarides said the report “focuses on costs, backlogs and failures, but we must not lose sight of the people behind the numbers.”

“The true cost of prolonged delays and uncertainty cannot be measured in pounds alone, but in the unnecessary suffering caused when those who have already endured so much are left waiting months or years for safety and stability,” she said.

“The consequences of getting an asylum decision wrong can be a matter of life and death.”

A Home Office spokesperson said asylum claims were down, hotel use was falling and immigration enforcement activity was “at the highest level on record.”