RISHI Sunak has been directly urged to step in after one of his Conservative ministers made “demonstrably false” statements to parliament.

It comes after Robert Jenrick, an immigration minister in the Home Office, told MPs that the SNP government “does not house refugees in Scotland”.

Doubling down, Jenrick also told Westminster: “If [SNP MPs] cared about this issue, they would welcome asylum seekers into their own part of the UK, but they do not.”

According to the Home Office’s own figures, more asylum seekers per 10,000 people are currently dispersed in Glasgow than anywhere else in the UK, and in 2020-2021 Scotland took around 13% of all refugees, above its UK population share of around 8%.

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The ministerial code, of which the Prime Minister is the arbiter, makes clear that deliberately misleading the Commons is a resignation offence. It says that an “inadvertent error” must be corrected on the record “at the earliest opportunity”.

The SNP’s home affairs spokesperson, Alison Thewliss, has now written to Sunak asking him to take action against his Government minister.

“Mr Jenrick made the claim that no refugees are housed in Scotland, and a further claim that no asylum seekers are housed in Scotland,” Thewliss said. “Given the opportunity to correct this demonstrably false statement on the record, he declined. This conduct is of the utmost seriousness.”

Thewliss (below) quoted...

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