Watchdog to examine government asylum backlog claims

The UK's statistics watchdog is looking into the government's claims to have cleared the asylum backlog.

On Tuesday, the Home Office said it had fulfilled a pledge to clear a "legacy" backlog of 92,000 applications lodged before July 2022.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak also tweeted that the government had cleared "the backlog of asylum decisions".

But official figures show a decision had not been reached in 4,537 of those "legacy" cases.

And they also showed that there are still 98,599 cases in the overall backlog where an initial decision is yet to be made.

The Office for Statistics Regulation, which monitors the use of official statistics in the UK, has confirmed it is looking into the government's claims.

Labour's shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said the government claim to have cleared the asylum backlog was "not true".

She also disputed the claim the "legacy" backlog had been cleared, adding that the government's figures also counted 17,000 withdrawn cases where the Home Office had "no idea where those people are," she said.

It comes just weeks after the UK Statistics Authority, which oversees the OSR, rebuked No 10 for saying that the government had reduced debt.

The watchdog suggested that claim "may have undermined trust in the Government's use of statistics".