Statistics watchdog to investigate Sunak’s claims about clearing asylum backlog

The prime minister had claimed that the government have cleared the asylum backlog – despite nearly 100,000 cases remaining

The statistics watchdog is investigating Rishi Sunak’s claims that the government have cleared the asylum backlog, The Independent understands.

The Office for Statistics Regulation has decided to examine the announcements made by Mr Sunak and the Home Office on Tuesday that the government had cut the number of outstanding asylum cases.

The prime minister was accused of a “barefaced lie” after figures revealed that nearly 100,000 migrants are still waiting for a decision.

The government had said that it had met Mr Sunak’s pledge to clear all so-called legacy asylum claims – counted as those submitted before June 2022. But official statistics confirmed that 4,500 of these cases had still to be processed.

The prime minister then suggested on Tuesday that he had cleared the entire backlog, despite data showing that 98,599 claims were still languishing in the system.

Rishi Sunak was accused of ‘lying’ about clearing the asylum backlog (PA)

He wrote on X, formerly Twitter: “I said that this government would clear the backlog of asylum decisions by the end of 2023. That’s exactly what we’ve done.”

Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said that claims made by Mr Sunak and her Tory counterpart James Cleverly were “just not true”. Shadow immigration minister Stephen Kinnock accused the prime minister of promoting a “barefaced lie” that was “an insult to the public’s intelligence”.

Mr Cleverly had said that “every single” legacy application had been processed, despite thousands remaining unresolved. He told the BBC that the government had “committed to processing all those applications” not completing them. He added: “Our commitment was to process them and we’ve done that.”

He also admitted that it would be “impossible” to say how long it would take to get through the outstanding asylum cases.

CEO of Care4Calais, Steve Smith, said the government was attempting to “cook the books”, adding: “They decided to create a so-called ‘legacy backlog’ to set a political target and it has not been met.”

Data shows that the government have also processed around 25,300 newer asylum claims, in addition to some 86,800 legacy cases, taking the total number of decisions made in the past year to over 112,000, the highest figure in two decades. Of these, 67 per cent were granted asylum.

James Cleverly said all legacy asylum backlog claims have been processed (PA)

Government data published on Tuesday showed that the legacy backlog was drastically cut in the last few months of last year. There were 33,253 decisions left to make in October, but this fell to 4,537 by 28 December.

Thirty-five thousand “non-substantive” decisions were also made in 2023 – up from 13,093 in 2022 – which includes applications that are withdrawn, void or paused and therefore removed from the official backlog.

The total asylum backlog now stands at 98,599. This is a decrease on record high levels in early 2023 when the backlog stood at nearly 140,000, but it is still historically high. In March 2020, the backlog stood at 40,000 and in 2013 the backlog was down at 9,500.

The Home Office also revealed that 348 hotels were still being used to house asylum seekers in December, a slight decrease from 398 in October.