Rishi Sunak has been accused of a “barefaced lie” after wrongly declaring that the government has cleared the backlog of asylum claims.
The prime minister posted on X (formerly Twitter) that the Home Office had dealt with 112,000 “legacy cases” - relating to claims made before June 2022 - by the end of last year.
“I said that this government would clear the backlog of asylum decisions by the end of 2023. That’s exactly what we’ve done,” Sunak said.
But Downing Street was forced to admit that 4,500 “complex cases” remain outstanding.
That is on top of 99,000 more recent claims which have yet to be processed.
Humiliatingly for the PM, his X post was community noted with the message “the backlog has not been cleared” and a link to a BBC report confirming the target has not been met.
Shadow immigration minister Stephen Kinnock said: “The PM’s barefaced lie that he has cleared the asylum backlog would be laughable if it wasn’t such an insult to the public’s intelligence.”