Yvette Cooper calls for Suella Braverman to withdraw claim that backlog is down by 17,000
There was confusion in the House of Commons yesterday over the Government's progress on cutting the backlog of asylum claims awaiting an initial decision.
Image credit: UK GovernmentIn a debate on asylum seekers arriving in the UK via small boats, which the Government terms 'illegal migration', the Home Secretary said she was encouraged by the progress being made on the initial decision backlog.
Suella Braverman told MPs: "[T]he asylum initial decision backlog is down by 17,000 and we are on track to abolish all legacy cases by the end of this year, having doubled the number of asylum decision makers over the last two years. We continue to improve the system and aim to boost the productivity of the caseworkers by simplifying the process with shorter interviews and the removal of unnecessary steps."
Labour's Shadow Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, said in response, however, that decisions were down and Home Office caseworker numbers had dropped.
Cooper said: "The Home Secretary also says she has cut the backlog, but the backlog is at a record high of 170,000. It has gone up, not down, since December. There has been an 18% drop in asylum decisions in the last quarter, and it is no good claiming they are only clearing a so-called legacy backlog of cases from before June 2022. What about the growing backlog of 60,000 people and more who have arrived in the last 12 months? They are still in the asylum system, still in hotels and still in limbo. A backlog is a backlog, no matter how much the Government try to spin it away. The only legacy we are talking about is the legacy of Tory failure to tackle the problem. All the Home Secretary has managed to do is take a few decisions on cases that are more than a year old."
Alison Thewliss of the SNP also questioned the Home Secretary's statistics and told the Commons: "The Home Secretary comes here with selective statistics that she has put together to suit the press release that she wants to put out, but the reality is that the total asylum backlog has increased by more than 40,000 people since this time last year. There are fewer decision makers in the Home Office now than there were in January. It is all distraction and sleight of hand."
In response to points made by Labour's Tan Dhesi and Neil Coyle about the backlog, the Home Secretary clarified: "We are on track to deliver on reducing the backlog of initial decisions and the legacy backlog. Those are decisions that have been waiting in the system up until July or June last year. Those are the backlogs that we are working on, and we are making good progress on eliminating it."
Braverman added in response to Tan Dhesi: "When the Prime Minister set out our plan, he made the goal clear: to reduce the initial decision backlog, which stood at about 90,000 at the time of his statement and has come down by a considerable amount as of today. We are making steady progress. If we continue on this trajectory and with the measures we are putting in place, we are on track to eliminate the backlog, and I look forward to updating the hon. Gentleman when we do so."
Following the claims, Labour's Yvette Cooper raised a point of order with the Deputy Speaker as the debate drew to a close.
Cooper told the Commons' Deputy Speaker: "The facts are that the asylum initial decision backlog is up by over 10,000, not down by 17,000. I know that there was a lot of nonsense in what the Home Secretary said, and sometimes it is hard to know where to start, but this is about the facts given to Parliament. Will she now withdraw the incorrect statement that she has made, because her facts are wrong?"
The Deputy Speaker noted that it was a matter of debate and interpretation of statistics and it was not a matter for the Speaker, though if a Minister delivering complicated statistics were to make a mistake, there is a procedure for correcting it.
The independent fact-checking organisation Full Fact reported: "The Home Office has since clarified that the 17,000 figure refers to the backlog of initial decisions relating to asylum applications made before 28 June 2022, though this wasn't made clear in Ms Braverman's comments. … [I]n recent months ministers have on several occasions used the term 'backlog' to refer only to asylum applications still waiting to be resolved which were opened before 28 June 2022. As a result, it's not always clear what specific set of figures ministers are referring to when they talk about the 'backlog', as is the case with Ms Braverman's comments."
CJ McKinney, immigration and home affairs researcher at the House of Commons Library, noted on Twitter today that the number of Home Office caseworkers had doubled since 2021, but were still well short of the Home Office's stated aim to have 2,500 in place by August of this year.
As of 1 May 2023, there were 1,280 caseworkers. This is down from a recent high of 1,333 in place as of 1 January 2023 but up from the 591 caseworkers in December 2021.