Rishi Sunak rebuked by watchdog for false asylum claim

PM wrong to claim backlog had halved since Labour government, says UK Statistics Authority

Rishi Sunak (PA Wire)

Rishi Sunak has been rebuked by the UK’s official statistics watchdog for making false claims about the backlog of claims made by asylum seekers.

The prime minister had told parliament in December that the backlog was only “half” of the number of claims in the system when Labour left office in 2010.

But Robert Chote, chairman of the UK Statistics Authority (UKSA) said this was incorrect and “do not reflect the position shown by the Home Office’s statistics”.

The number of asylum applications awaiting a decision was 166,000 at the end of December 2022, according to Home Office figures.

The number of undecided asylum applications in June 2010 – as Labour made way for the Tory-Lib Dem coalition – was just under 19,000.

“This means that during the period from June 2010 to December 2022 there has been a net increase in undecided asylum applications of 147,307, not a halving,” Mr Chote pointed.

The UKSA correction came in response to a request from Labour’s shadow immigration minister Stephen Kinnock to investigate statements made by Mr Sunak and Tory immigration minister Robert Jenrick.

Mr Kinnock has written to the PM to demand he corrects his statement in the Commons. “If such misleading statements remain on the record uncorrected, this will mislead the public and could amount to a breach of both the official code of practice for statistics,” he said.

The Labour frontbencher added: “I strongly urge you to lead by example and correct the erroneous use of figures in that statement at your earliest opportunity, and to call on the minister for immigration and the minister for safeguarding to do the same.”

Mr Jenrick – also rebuked by the stats watchdog – had claimed that the asylum backlog “was 450,000 when the last Labour government handed over to us”.

Immigration minister Robert Jenrick (AP)

The Home Office said the Tory minister had used the figures from a report by the then chief inspector of immigration, who estimated that the UK Border Agency was dealing with approximately 400,000 to 450,000 unresolved cases in 2010.

But UKSA said this figure was unreliable because it involved duplications, errrors and other anomalies.

Mr Chote said: “Given the data quality issues at that time, it would not be reasonable to suggest that this management information from the UK Border Agency accurately represented half a million genuine undecided asylum applications then in the backlog.”

Last February, then PM Boris Johnson and his home secretary Priti Patel were both rebuked by the statistics watchdog for “misleading” claims that crime had fallen under their leadership.

In May Mr Johnson was told off by the UKSA for a third time after he made misleading claims about employment he had already been warned were incorrect.