During an interview on Sky News on 22 October, immigration minister Robert Jenrick MP said “the backlog in asylum cases is now falling rapidly”. We’ve written to the Home Office previously about ministers failing to make clear the distinction between the overall backlog in asylum applications and the smaller group of “legacy backlog” applications. In December 2022, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced a five point plan to tackle the asylum backlog. When ministers make claims about the asylum backlog, they should be clear about which backlog they're referring to so as to prevent the public from being misled. It is reasonable to assume that people might think the phrase “asylum backlog” refers to the total number of asylum cases awaiting an initial decision.

Source: The Times October 27, 2023 16:09 UTC