Prime Minister Rishi Sunak lauded his government’s efforts to clear the backlog of asylum seeker applications while revealing that immigration officials granted a record-breaking number of migrants the right to remain in the country.
Britain’s Home Office cleared 112,000 asylum cases last year as it ramped up efforts to clear the backlog of undecided cases. There were 77,000 final decisions, with 51,469 migrants being granted asylum in the country. This represents the most asylum applications granted in history, far outpacing the previous high of 33,460 in 2002 under former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair, GB News reports.
There are still around 99,000 migrants waiting on a decision for their asylum application, compared to 136,000 last year. The decline came as the government cleared the backlog of “legacy” claims — those made before the 28th of June in 2022 when new asylum laws came into place. There are still, however, around 4,500 “complex” legacy cases remaining on the books, which typically involve asylum seekers fraudulently claiming to be children or having previous criminal convictions.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said: “By clearing the legacy asylum backlog, deciding more than 112,000 cases, we are saving the taxpayer millions of pounds in expensive hotel costs, reducing strain on public services and ensuring the most vulnerable receive the right support.
“But we cannot be complacent, which is why I am focused on delivering on my commitment to stop the boats and get flights off the ground to Rwanda.”
“I am determined to end the burden of illegal migration on the British people,” the prime minister continued. “That is why we have taken action to stop the boats, return hotels to their local communities, and deter those wanting to come here illegally from doing so.”
However, others did not view the announcement as something to cheer about, with Brexit leader Nigel Farage claiming that the government had “rushed through” the decisions to grant asylum and therefore failed the country.
“In an effort to rush through the Asylum backlog, this morning [Rishi Sunak] boasts he has granted 50,000 new applications. The Conservatives have failed us all,” Farage wrote on X.
Former immigration minister Robert Jenrick, who resigned last month over the government’s failures to go further in efforts to ramp up deportations, said: “The clearance of the legacy asylum backlog is a promise kept. But ultimately this is just managing the symptoms of the problem, not solving it.”
Meanwhile, the left accused the government of “fiddling the figures” to make it appear that the government hit their target of clearing the backlog, pointing to the thousands of so-called “complex” cases that still remain on the books and the 17,000 that have simply been removed from the backlog without a decision, Labour Party shadow immigration minister Stephen Kinnock told the BBC.
A Home Office source told the Guardian: “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.”