James Cleverly rejects claims Home Office was wrong to say it has cleared legacy asylum backlog – UK politics live

Home secretary said the government had met its targets despite Labour claiming this is ‘false’

Good morning and happy new year. Politics is not starting at full pelt this week – the Commons is not back until next week, and although Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer have visits scheduled for later this week, we’re not expecting to hear from them today – but James Cleverly, the home secretary, has been doing a media round, and the news is dominated by an argument about immigration policy. As it will be, no doubt, for most of the rest of 2024. Never mind; only 365 more days to go.

Cleverly is doing interviews because the Home Office says it has found a pledge by Rishi Sunak that he has actually met – clearing the backlog for “legacy” asylum applications. As Rajeev Syal explains in his overnight story, experts say this is misleading, and that in fact the backlog has not been fully cleared.

The asylum backlog has rocketed to 165,000 under the Tories - eight times higher than when Labour left office - and no slicing or renaming the figures can disguise that fact. Even their claims to have cleared the so-called ‘legacy backlog’ are false.

Over 4,000 claims are unresolved and a disturbing 17,000 asylum seekers have simply been ‘withdrawn’ by the Tories from this legacy backlog, with ministers seeming to have no idea where they are and whether they are reapplying or disappearing into the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.

Because it has. Because it has. Our commitment was to make sure we process those 92,000 legacy claims, predating 28 June 2022. They had not been assessed. Those people needed to be accommodated, they needed to be supported financially, and the prime minister committed to processing all those applications. Every single one of those applications has been processed.

It was a joke that I made and of course you know I regret it and I apologised immediately, and that apology is heartfelt.

But the point that I’ve made is that as home secretary I was the first home secretary to put forward legislation to toughen our ability to deal with spiking.