Immigration minister Robert Jenrick has been rebuked for misleading parliament over the number of foreign criminals who have been referred for help as suspected modern slaves.

Mr Jenrick had claimed that the government was seeing “flagrant abuse” of the system designed to help modern slaves. He told the House of Commons that “71 per cent of foreign national offenders in the detained estate, whom we are trying to remove from the country, are claiming to be modern slaves”.

However, the watchodog, the UK Statistics Authority, has said Mr Jenrick was wrong to claim this. Sir Robert Chote, chairman of the statistics regulator, said that the Home Office’s own report on the issue shows that around one fifth of foreign offenders convicted in the UK had been referred for modern slavery support, not the 71 per cent that Mr Jenrick claimed.

Foreign national offenders make up a very small proportion of people who are detained for deportation after arriving in the UK on a small boat, the department said.

In a letter to Mr Jenrick sent on 4 July, Sir Robert wrote: “The [Home Office] report explains that while an increasing proportion of all those in detention after arriving by small boat are referred to the NRM up from 52 per cent in 2020 and 73 per cent in 2021 (and subsequently falling to 65 per cent between January and September 2022), the proportion among foreign national offenders is much lower (at around 20 per cent between January and September 2022)”.

He continued: “As you have...

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