No 10 has dropped a proposal for an end-of-year immigration update from Rishi Sunak amid concern that key policies that are meant to “stop the boats” are running into trouble.
The prime minister had been expected to make a statement in December outlining progress on the Rwanda deportation scheme and plans to house asylum seekers in ships such as the Bibby Stockholm and in former barracks, Whitehall sources said.
But the idea has been quietly shelved after Conservative party splits over the Rwanda bill, the suspected suicide of an Albanian man on the Bibby Stockholm in Portland, Dorset, and a failure to place asylum seekers in large numbers into surplus MoD accommodation.
No 10 sources denied that actual plans were drawn up for an immigration announcement in December. A government spokesperson said: “As the prime minister has said, we remain on track to clear the backlog of legacy asylum cases.”
Progress appears to have been made in clearing the “legacy” backlog of 91,000 asylum claims made before 28 June 2022, the Guardian understands.
Figures leaked to the Guardian show there were about 4,000 legacy backlog cases this week, which mean the Home Office may yet meet Sunak’s pledge to clear the backlog by the end of the year.
However, insiders say many asylum claims from the legacy backlog have been dismissed in the knowledge that they will be resubmitted but will no longer count as legacy claims. Instead, they will be defined as “secondary asylum casework”, while Sunak’s promise to clear the backlog will be realised.
A Home Office insider said this amounted to “fiddling the figures”. They said: “Many cases are dropped because claimants have not filled in questionnaires on time or have failed to attend an interview. Their forms will be resubmitted and the claims recategorised, but no longer part of the legacy backlog. It looks like a way of fiddling the figures to hit the PM’s target.”
The Home Office has been asked for a breakdown of the number of cases that were legacy cases and that are now “secondary asylum casework”.
According to Whitehall sources, plans were raised between the Home Office and No 10 in the autumn for Sunak to give the nation an end-of-year update on immigration policies.
The plan was to echo a speech made on 5 June, when Sunak said: “I’d like to update you on the progress that the home secretary and I are making. And my message is this – our plan is starting to work.”
In that speech, he promised to “remove illegal migrants” to Rwanda. He added that he would get “illegal migrants out of hotels and into alternative sites, including military facilities”, and house people on ships.
Sunak narrowly avoided a large rebellion by rightwing Tory MPs after they abstained on his Rwanda bill, but he faces further peril in the new year from centrist Tory MPs who have said that any concessions to the right could mean they vote down the legislation.
There are now about 300 asylum seekers on the Bibby Stockholm, many of whom are in shock after the death last week of Leonard Farruku, 27, an Albanian national. No other ships have been commissioned by the government.
After Sunak’s expected end-of-year speech failed to materialise, one Tory source said: “The backlog hasn’t been cleared, the Bibby is half-full, our small boats plan is in turmoil and we still haven’t got migrants on all of the large military sites we’re supposed to have delivered. This is supposed to be our wedge issue with Labour and instead it’s a millstone around our necks.”
Last December, Sunak pledged to “abolish the backlog of initial asylum decisions by the end of next year” – a figure that was later defined as the “legacy backlog” of 91,000 older cases waiting to be processed.
The number of asylum caseworkers has doubled since then. The latest official figures, from 5 December, showed there were 18,000 cases left out of the 91,000.
As of 30 November, the initial legacy backlog had been reduced by more than 74,000 cases, which is more than 80%. A government source said: “We are not at the end of the year yet, but we are making very good progress.
“We have taken immediate action to speed up asylum processing, including significantly increasing the number of caseworkers. The latest published figures show we have reduced the initial legacy backlog by more than 80%.
“This year, small boat crossings are down by a third and we have removed 22,000 people to safe countries. We will continue to build upon this progress next year by doing whatever it takes to get flights off the ground to Rwanda and stop the boats.”
