Rishi Sunak could face ANOTHER Parliamentary probe - this time over his use of “entirely misleading” immigration figures.
The PM, who is already being investigated over failure to tell MPs about his wife’s financial interests, has been rapped by the UK statistics watchdog after wrongly claiming the asylum backlog is half what it was when Labour was in office.
But despite the UK Statistics Authority saying in March that it is in fact EIGHT TIMES higher now, Mr Sunak has yet to correct the record.
Sir Robert Chote, who heads the watchdog, also found two frontbenchers - Robert Jenrick and Sarah Dines - also made statements that “do not reflect” Home Office figures.
Labour's Shadow Immigration Minister Stephen Kinnock has asked Parliament's Procedures Committee to investigate the failure to correct the errors.
He warns it shows a "cavalier attitude" and claimed they could be in breach of the Ministerial Code.
Mr Kinnock told The Mirror: "It is staggering that the Prime Minister and his Immigration Minister are refusing to correct the public record - as required by the Ministerial Code - despite their own statistics regulator rebuking their misuse of discredited data.
"The facts are clear: at 166,000, the Home Office's own statistics shows that the asylum backlog is more than eight times higher under the Conservatives than it was in 2010.
"The Conservatives have broken the asylum system."
On December 14, Mr Sunak told MPs that the current backlog is half the size it was when Labour was in office.
The following day Ms Dines said that more than 500,000 legacy cases were left by the last Labour government.
And on December 19, Immigration Minister Mr Jenrick said 450,000 cases were left at the end of Gordon Brown's premiership in 2010.
However Sir Robert said that the number was in reality less than 20,000.
In a letter to Karen Bradley, who chairs the Procedure Committee, Mr Kinnock said it is "deeply disappointing" that Mr Jenrick and the PM "are refusing to acknowledge" that statements they have made to the House were "demonstrably false and entirely misleading".
He told Ms Bradley: "I believe that the Minister’s continued refusal to correct the record amounts to a breach of the Ministerial Code, that it demonstrates a cavalier attitude to the facts, is disrespectful to Members and sets a troubling precedent."
In a separate letter to the PM last month, Mr Kinnock said: "I take you at your word that it has been your intention to lead a government with ‘integrity, professionalism and accountability at every level.’
"On that basis, I trust that you had no intention to mislead the House in your statement of 13 December.
"Nevertheless, I strongly urge you to lead by example and correct the erroneous use of figures in that statement at your earliest opportunity, and to call on the Minister for Immigration (Mr Jenrick) and the Minister for Safeguarding (Ms Dines) to do the same."
He later received a reply from Mr Jenrick, who said he'd got the figures from a report by John Vine, then Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration.
The UK Statistics Authority said these figures contained duplications, errors or applications which later turned out to be archived.
Sir Robert wrote it "would not be reasonable" to say there were half a million genuine undecided asylum applications in 2010.
On March 23 he wrote: "The statements by Ministers that you asked about do not reflect the position shown by the Home Office’s statistics.
"I have engaged with their offices to bring this to their attention and share the UK Statistics Authority’s expectations for the use of official statistics and data in public debate."
A Home Office spokesman said: “Government Ministers have set out the justification for their comments, and a public letter has been deposited in the House of Commons Library in response.”
The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, Daniel Greenberg, is probing whether the PM broke the MPs' code of conduct.
Mr Greenberg's investigation, which was launched on Thursday last week and confirmed today, centres around shares Mr Sunak's heiress wife Akshata Murty holds in agency Koru Kids.
The company said on its website that the new incentives open to childminders - announced by Chancellor Jeremy Hunt last month - are "great”.
The Mirror previously reported that Mr Sunak failed to mention Ms Murty's links to the company when he was questioned by MPs over why the private firms were set to benefit the most.
Downing Street has claimed rules were followed "to the letter".
