Home Office officials are resorting to searching the internet for reasons to refuse asylum, entry clearance and leave to remain applications – and copying and pasting the resulting text into refusals, the Gazette has been told.

Philip Trott, head of immigration at Bates, Wells Braithwaite, told a Gazette roundtable: ‘I am seeing more and more cases involving refusals on national security cases where… what you see in the refusal box has been extracted from Google and from no other source.’