The statistics watchdog has confirmed on Wednesday that it’s scrutinising the government’s claim on having clearing the asylum backlog.
The government said in a statement published on Tuesday that it has delivered Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s commitment of “clearing the legacy asylum backlog” despite the fact that 4,537 “complex cases” remain undecided.
Critics also disputed the claim because many of the applications have been treated as “withdrawn” and questioned the whereabouts of these asylum seekers.
The Office for Statistics Regulation, the regulatory arm of the UK Statistics Authority, is “looking into the government’s announcement [on Jan. 2],” a spokesperson for the authority told The Epoch Times in an email.
The size of overall backlog remains high, at 98,599, although it’s 27.5 percent down from the level a year ago (135,959).
Rise of ‘Withdrawn’ Cases
Critics have also lambasted the rise of “withdrawn” cases, with shadow immigration minister Stephen Kinnock accusing the government of “cooking the books.”Jamie Jenkins, former head of health analysis and labour market analysis at the Office for National Statistics, told The Epoch Times in a message that the process poses “a significant security risk.”
“Despite clearing the pre-July 2022 backlog, the government created a new one of similar size. Their handling of the old backlog is also questionable, with 35,000 applications withdrawn (often due to lost contact), posing a significant security risk,” he said.
Of the 112,138 initial asylum decisions made in the past year, 35,119 were non-substantive decisions, including “withdrawn applications and administrative decisions (void and deceased),” the Home Office said. It’s 168 percent higher than the number in 2022 (13,093).
In 2022, 5,389 claims were “withdrawn,” cases, according to The Epoch Times analysis of the Home Office’s data. That’s 41 percent of the “non-substantive” decisions. However, the portion of “withdrawn” cases in 2023 is expected to be much higher partly because of a policy change to accelerate the processing of claims and partly because of the withdrawal of Albanian cases.
Home Office guidance published in February last year said legacy claimants who had not had an interview would instead be given 20 to 30 days to fill a questionnaire, and those who fail to return the questionnaire within 30 days and don’t apply for a further extension may have their applications treated as “withdrawn.”
The latest Home Office quarterly data show a total of 6,068 cases were treated as “withdrawn” in the first quarter of 2023, compared to 1,652 cases in the previous quarter.
Questioned repeatedly on the matter, he later walked back on the claim, saying, “All I meant was that we do not have all of those people in detention. We have information on them and we need to use our removal services to remove the people who are not here legally.”
“This is not surprising. We consistently tend to see Albanians using the asylum route, having arrived via small boat. That is convenient in the circumstances, but they do not particularly want to be within the asylum system. That accounts for a very significant chunk of the figure,” he said.
The number of Albanian illegal immigrant immigrants soared in 2022, with 12,658 Albanian nationals reaching the UK by crossing the English Channel, up from 815 in 2021.
The UK government later struck a deal with Albania to return small boat arrival from the country.
In 2023, the number of Albanian small boat arrivals has dropped to 927, some 7 percent of the figure in the previous year. Ministers have cited this as one of the reasons why the overall number of small boat arrivals went down by 36 percent last year.
