The statistics watchdog has found that the prime minister used incorrect figures when comparing the current asylum backlog to when Labour was in power.
Sir Robert Chote, the chair of the UK Statistics Authority, has written to the immigration minister, Robert Jenrick, to point out the inaccuracy.
“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,” the letter states.
Chote wrote the letter in response to a complaint from Stephen Kinnock, the shadow immigration minister, about what he believed to be a factual inaccuracy by the prime minister referring to the asylum backlog under Labour as much larger than the current government backlog of more than 160,000.
Chote said the backlog stood at about 19,000 before Labour was voted out in the 2010 election.
“The most appropriate source of statistics on asylum applications awaiting a decision are produced by the Home Office and reported quarterly,” he said.
“These tell us that the number of applications awaiting a decision was 18,954 in June 2010. This is the earliest published data and coincides closely with the 2010 general election. The same spreadsheet also provides the latest number of undecided asylum applications, which was 166,261 at the end of December 2022.
This means that during the period from June 2010 to December 2022 there has been a net increase in undecided asylum applications of 147,307.”
Rishi Sunak told the House of Commons that the backlog was “half the size that it was when Labour was in office” during a debate on migration on 13 December.
He made the remarks when responding to Alison McGovern, a Labour MP who had argued the backlog was “now 14 times bigger” than when her party left office.
Sunak told her she needed to “get her numbers right”.
The same claim was used in the Commons by Jenrick and the safeguarding minister, Sarah Dines.
Chote’s letter was published on Thursday after Kinnock wrote to him last December accusing ministers of “providing an inaccurate and wholly misleading picture of reality”.
Kinnock said: “The Tories are making so many false and misleading claims about Labour’s record in office because they want to deflect attention away from their own failures. The UK’s statistics watchdog has now confirmed that for every one person who was waiting for an asylum claim in 2010, eight people are waiting today, with a staggering 166,000 currently awaiting decisions. Their evidence completely debunks the Conservatives’ lies.”
The organisation Full Fact has identified other factually inaccurate claims made about immigration matters including the claim by the home secretary, Suella Braverman, that 100 million refugees could come to the UK and the claim that asylum seekers get £175 a week from the government.
