Rishi Sunak’s claim to have cleared the asylum backlog labelled ‘misleading’ by factchecker

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Rishi Sunak’s claim that the authorities has cleared the asylum backlog has been referred to as “misleading” by a truth checking organisation.

Full Fact, a charity that combats misinformation, reviewed the claim after a row broke out about the backog, with Labour accusing Mr Sunak of a “barefaced lie”.

It comes after the statistics watchdog, the Office for Statistics Regulation, launched an investigation into Mr Sunak’s announcement.

The prime minister had mentioned that the pledge to clear all so-called legacy asylum claims – counted as these submitted earlier than June 2022 – had been met. Official statistics launched on Tuesday confirmed that 4,500 of those instances had nonetheless to be processed.

Mr Sunak then went on to counsel that he had cleared the whole backlog, regardless of knowledge displaying that 98,599 claims have been nonetheless ready on a choice.

He wrote on X, formely Twitter: “I said that this government would clear the backlog of asylum decisions by the end of 2023. That’s exactly what we’ve done.”

Now Full Fact have determined that this assertion was deceptive. In their evaluation, printed on their web site on Wednesday, they wrote: “This is misleading. The PM’s claim relates 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.

“Most ‘legacy backlog’ cases have been resolved but around 4,500 are still marked as awaiting an initial decision.”

Reacting to Mr Sunak’s feedback, Labour’s shadow residence secretary Yvette Cooper mentioned they have been “just not true”, and shadow immigration minister Steven Kinnock accused him of a “barefaced lie” that was “an insult to the public’s intelligence”.

Home secretary James Cleverly had additionally mentioned that “every single” legacy asylum case had been processed, regardless of hundreds remaining unresolved.

He mentioned that the authorities had “committed to processing all those applications” not finishing them. He mentioned it was “impossible” to know after they can be given choices and mentioned the instances have been “complex”.

Mr Kinnock wrote to the statistics watchdog on Wednesday to set out his considerations about the Tories’s claims. In a letter to the chair of the UK Statistics Authority Sir Robert Chote, he wrote: “I am concerned that these statements by ministers – if left uncorrected – risk creating a highly misleading picture of the actual state of affairs with respect to the asylum backlog, an issue of significant interest to the public.”