Rishi Sunak has been accused of misleading the public with his claim to have cleared the asylum backlog.
The Government’s statistics watchdog has warned the Prime Minister’s claim, which was not accurate, risked eroding public trust.
Mr Sunak cited Home Office figures earlier this month to claim his Government had “cleared the backlog of asylum decisions by the end of 2023”.
Writing on X, he added: “That’s exactly what I’ve done. Over 112,000 cases are now cleared with a lower grant rate than last year, a key part of our plan to stop the boats.”
However, the figures he cited actually relate to a subsection of outstanding asylum cases called the “legacy backlog”, rather than the overall backlog of cases which still stands at almost 100,000.
The majority of “legacy backlog” cases, which refer to asylum applications made before 28 June 2022, have been resolved but around 4,500 are still marked as awaiting an initial decision.
Meanwhile, the total number of asylum cases awaiting an initial decision stands at just under 99,000. The figure has dipped from a peak of 140,000 in March 2023, but is almost exactly where it was 18 months ago when the Government’s landmark Nationality and Borders Act came into force.
Sir Robert Chote, chairman of the UK Statistics Authority, a non-ministerial Government department, warned that the “episode may affect public trust”.
In a letter published on Thursday, he said: “The average member of the public is likely to interpret a claim to have ‘...
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