Rishi Sunak asked to correct asylum figures error

The prime minister has been encouraged to correct the record on a claim he made in Parliament about the backlog of asylum claims.

Shadow immigration minister Stephen Kinnock has written to Rishi Sunak urging him to correct his "erroneous use of figures".

Mr Sunak told MPs on 13 December that the backlog was half the size it was when Labour was last in office.

Mr Sunak said in Parliament: "The backlog now, difficult though it is, is half as big as it was under the last Labour government".

The Home Office has confirmed to us that this came from evidence given to the Home Affairs Committee by the UK Border Agency in 2011.

The agency said it had reviewed 500,500 cases (455,000 of which were concluded) as part of a clearance exercise to deal with the backlog of asylum applications, which was started in 2006 and was still under way at the time of the 2010 election.

That would certainly be more than double the backlog, based on quarterly Home Office figures for the end of December 2022, when it was 166,261.

But the chairman of the UK Statistics Authority, Sir Robert 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."

He said the correct figure to compare with the current backlog figure from the Home Office should be taken from the same Home Office quarterly statistics, which show that the number of applications awaiting a decision in June 2010 was 18,954.

"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," said Sir Robert.

Stephen Kinnock had raised a point of order in the House of Commons on 27 March, calling on ministers to correct their earlier statements, but that has not yet happened.

He also referred a claim made by Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick on 19 December, who said: "The backlog of cases was 450,000 when the last Labour Government handed over to us".

And Safeguarding Minister Sarah Dines said on 14 December: "Over half a million legacy cases had been left by the Labour government".

We asked Downing Street and the Home Office if ministers were planning to correct the record. The Home Office referred us to the report from the Chief Inspector of Borders and added: "We are taking immediate action to bring the asylum backlog down."

We have not yet heard back from Downing Street.