The UK’s statistics watchdog on Thursday said that it is “looking into” the government’s recent announcement that it had met Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s target to clear the country’s asylum backlog by the end of 2023, a claim strongly contested by the Opposition.
Earlier this week, the UK Home Office said that 112,000 asylum cases were processed in the past year, which exceeded Sunak’s initial target of 92,000 applications pending at the end of 2022.
However, the Opposition Labour Party had contested this and accused the government of misleading the public. It has now emerged that a formal complaint is likely to have been raised with the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR), which independently monitors the use of official statistics.
“The Office for Statistics Regulation confirmed it is looking into the government announcement about the asylum backlog, said a spokesperson for OSR.
While the OSR can ask for additional information from the Home Office, it does not have the power to compel data to be provided. It can, however, withdraw the high quality “kitemark” it provides the Home Office with reference to their statistics released over the course of the year.
In a statement from Tuesday, the Home Office claimed that fundamental changes to the decision-making process and boosting efficiency resulted in the highest annual number of “substantive” asylum decisions in a year since 2002.
It cited the use of stepped up processing, deploying an additional 1,200 caseworkers, meeting the target to double the number of asylum caseworkers and tripling productivity to ensure more illegal migrants are returned to their country of origin quicker.