Why did Rishi Sunak say there were “6,000 fewer” people in the asylum backlog? The Home Office won’t tell us, and the latest published data shows that in total over 17,000 more people are waiting for applications to be resolved.
How many asylum applications are waiting to be processed?
We can find no way of measuring the total backlog that would suggest it has fallen recently, however. Indeed the latest figures, from December 2022, show that the total backlog is at its highest level since 2010, when the current dataset begins. This is true whether you count applications or people.Immediately after Prime Minister’s Questions, we asked the Home Office and Downing Street what he was referring to.
Given Mr Sunak has previously used the phrase “asylum backlog” to refer to the pre-June legacy backlog, it’s possible that he was referring to that again, but this isn’t something that he said. It is also possible that Mr Sunak was talking about the total asylum backlog, but referring to unpublished data. The latest official figures were published on 23 February and show outstanding cases up to the end of December, but the Prime Minister may have access to more recent data.
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