Rishi Sunak

Archie Mitchell, The Independent

Rishi Sunak’s claim to have met a pledge to clear the backlog of so-called legacy asylum claims has been branded misleading as thousands are still awaiting a decision. The prime minister credited “relentless action” as the government announced on Monday that it had met a target to clear a backlog of asylum claims.

The Home Office said it had processed more than 112,000 asylum cases overall in 2023, but Labour accused the government of making false claims about meeting the target, with figures suggesting the department had fallen short of the number initially set to reach. The government said all cases in the legacy backlog have now been reviewed, with 86,800 decisions made, but “4,500 complex cases have been highlighted that require additional checks or investigation for a final decision to be made”.

Such cases typically involve “asylum seekers presenting as children — where age verification is taking place; those with serious medical issues; or those with suspected past convictions, where checks may reveal criminality that would bar asylum”, the department added.

Shadow immigration minister Stephen Kinnock said the claims were “false” and attacked the government for withdrawing the claims of 17,000 asylum seekers. He said: “Over 4,000 claims are unresolved and a disturbing 17,000 asylum seekers have simply been ‘withdrawn’ by the Tories from this legacy backlog, with Ministers seeming to have no idea where they are and whether they are reapplying or disappearing into the underground economy.” And he accused the PM of “disastrously” breaking a promise to end the use of costly hotels for asylum seekers, with the number housed in hotels in use up by a fifth to 56,000.

Figures released on Tuesday showed that there were still 4,537 asylum cases in the legacy backlog by 28 December last year. The government also processed around 25,300 newer asylum claims last year, in addition to legacy cases. Claims had a grant rate of 67 per cent, with refusals increasing compared to the year before. Charity the Refugee Council said it is “misleading” for the government to have claimed to have cleared the so-called legacy backlog.

Chief executive Enver Solomon said: “After mismanaging the asylum system for so many years the government was right to clear the backlog but was wrong to do it in a way that has failed to see the face behind the case and instead has treated people simply as statistics rather than with the care and compassion they deserve,” James Cleverly said on Tuesday that the number of claims processed was the highest for 20 years, while fewer claims were accepted as a proportion of the total. The home secretary told Sky News: “As we move forward with this process, we will have a tighter set of criteria than we had in the past, we should see that proportion of grants coming down and we are taking action to secure our borders and stop the boats.”

And, quizzed about the 17,000 asylum seekers whose cases have been withdrawn, Cleverly said “some of them will have left” while others will have “slipped out of the system” to work illegally in the UK.

A report in the i newspaper said the Home Office was cancelling asylum claims by mistake under pressure to meet Sunak’s target to clear the backlog. Sunak told the Daily Express: “The progress is the result of relentless action to tackle illegal migration over the past year. “When I set out my blueprint to stop the boats, abolishing the legacy backlog was a key part of it.” Sunak previously pledged to remove the older asylum applications by the end of 2023, tasking the Home Office with tackling the number of so-called “legacy” claims. Ahead of official figures being published on Tuesday morning, it is understood the Home Office has processed around 25,200 newer asylum claims, in addition to 86,800 decisions in legacy cases, taking the provisional number of total decisions made overall in the year to 112,000.

Officials say as many decisions as possible were made in the legacy backlog, and outstanding cases were because the department would not compromise on security and needed to make sure additional checks were carried out. They believe efforts to also clear a chunk of newer cases at the same time points towards the commitment to tackling the overall asylum backlog. In one four-week period from November 20 to December 17, there were 20,481 initial asylum decisions made — more than the number of asylum decisions made in the entirety of 2021, the Home Office said. The grant rate for final asylum decisions on fully completed cases in 2023 stood at 67 per cent, lower than in 2022 and 2021 (76 per cent and 72 per cent).

Setting out a five-point plan in a bid to grip the migrant crisis in the Commons in December 2022, Sunak said “unless we act now, and decisively, this will only get worse”. Among a raft of new measures unveiled to curb Channel crossings, he told MPs “we expect to abolish the backlog of initial asylum decisions by the end of next year” after hiring more caseworkers and overhauling the system for processing applications. But his vow was almost immediately called into question by Labour amid confusion over the scale of his ambition.

Within hours of the announcement, Downing Street appeared to downgrade the target to say only a portion of outstanding applications would be cleared, insisting the Prime Minister had only committed to addressing the backlog of 92,601 initial asylum claims made before June 2022, when the Nationality and Borders Act came into force. In February last year, the Home Office said thousands of asylum seekers would be sent questionnaires which could be used to decide their claims, as part of efforts to cut the soaring backlog of cases and speed up the processing of applications. About 12,000 people from Afghanistan, Syria, Eritrea, Libya and Yemen, who had applied for asylum in the UK and were waiting for a decision, were understood to be eligible under the policy which would see them being asked to fill out the form instead of being automatically interviewed. Whitehall’s spending watchdog said in June that efforts to clear the asylum backlog needed to significantly increase to meet Sunak’s target and questioned whether the plans were sustainable.