PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Asylum: LGBT+ People (22 June 2020)

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many people have been granted asylum in the UK as a result of persecution for being LGBTQ+ in their home state in each of the last 15 years.

Asked by:
Ed Davey (Liberal Democrat)

The Home Office is unable to state how many people have been granted asylum in the UK as a result of persecution for being LGBTQ+ in their home states in each of the last 15 years.

The Home Office remains committed to publishing information on the number of people claiming asylum on the basis of sexual orientation.

While the Department does not hold pre-July 2015 data in a reportable format and does not currently break down the data into the separate lesbian, gay or bisexual category, experimental data on asylum claims lodged on the basis of sexual orientation, including the number of claimants who were granted asylum, between July 2015 and August 2019 is available at SOC_00 and SOC_04 of the published immigrations statistics year ending March 2020 and is broken down by nationality:

www.gov.uk/government/publications/immigration-statistics-year-ending-march-2020/list-of-tables#asylum-on-the-basis-of-sexual-orientation.

The data does not represent the number of asylum claimants who define themselves as LGB. Having an identifier that an asylum case is based on sexual orientation does not indicate that a claimant has any particular sexuality or that sexual orientation is the reason for any grant or refusal of asylum. It also does not signify whether that aspect of the claim has been accepted. Sexual orientation as a basis of claim could be due to imputed assertions or association rather than a defining characteristic of the claimant.

Answered by:
Chris Philp (Conservative)
1 July 2020