The UK’s statistics watchdog has criticised the government for claiming to have cleared the legacy asylum backlog – saying it is “not surprising” people felt “misled”.
Rishi Sunak and his administration faced criticism at the start of the year for saying they had cleared all the applications to remain in the UK by asylum seekers made before 28 June 2022.
In total, 4,537 claims from the backlog still needed a decision at the time of the announcement – but Mr Sunak’s spokesman said since these had been reviewed, the government considered them “cleared”.
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Following a review, the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) has now written to opposition MPs that complained about the prime minister’s claims.
Sir Robert Chote, the OSR’s chair, said that “it is not surprising that the government’s claim has been greeted with scepticism and that some people may feel misled”.
Liberal Democrat MP Alistair Carmichael said: “Not only is the government celebrating something that is no achievement, they are twisting the facts, as proven by the UK stats authority just today.
“As this letter again shows, the Conservatives have not cleared the asylum backlog. The British public deserves better than this.”
Mr Carmichael was one of the MPs who complained, alongside Labour’s shadow immigration minister Stephen Kinnock.
A post on X from Rishi Sunak at the time had a community note added to it – meaning other users provided context for what was said.
In his letter, Sir Robert said that the “average member of the public is likely to interpret a claim to have ‘cleared a backlog’ – especially when presented without context on social media – as meaning that it has been eliminated entirely”.
He added: “That said, there may be a perfectly good case for excluding cases of this type [the ones which remain but were counted as ‘cleared’] from any commitment to eliminate the backlog over the timeframe the government chose, but this argument was not made at the time the target was announced or when it was clarified in the letter to the home affairs committee.
“This episode may affect public trust when the government sets targets and announces whether they have been met in the other policy domains. It highlights the need for ministers and advisers to think carefully about how a reasonable person would interpret a quantitative claim of the sort and to consult the statistical professionals in their department.”
While Sir Robert thanked the government for publishing the data alongside its claim, it noted this was not provided ahead of time to journalists, “which prevented them from being able to scrutinise the data when first reporting it”.
“This does not support our expectations around intelligent transparency, and we have raised this with the Home Office,” he said.
Mr Sunak pledged in December 2022 that he would “abolish” the legacy backlog of asylum claims made before 28 June of that year, with the Home Office being given the target of the end of 2023.
The department said the pledge had been “delivered” earlier this month, having processed more than 112,000 asylum claims overall in 2023.
There were more than 92,000 asylum claims made before 28 June 2022 requiring a decision, but Labour has said the government’s claim that all of those cases have been cleared is “false”.
The Home Office conceded that all cases in the legacy backlog have been reviewed, but added that “4,500 complex cases have been highlighted that require additional checks or investigation for a final decision to be made”.
