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

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.

Labour is also questioning the Home Office’s claim. This is what Stephen Kinnock, the shadow immigration minister, said last night.

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Over 4,000 claims are unresolved and a disturbing 17,000 asylum seekers have simply been ‘withdrawn’ by the Tories from this legacy backlog, with ministers seeming to have no idea where they are and whether they are reapplying or disappearing into the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

But on the Today programme, when Mishal Husain asked him why the Home Office was saying the legacy backlog target had been met when it hadn’t, Cleverly replied:

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.

In fact, when Sunak made the commitment in the Commons in December 2022, he talked not just about processing claims, but about eliminating the backlog. “We expect to abolish the backlog of initial asylum decisions by the end of next year,” he told MPs.

Cleverly has also faced questions for the first time about the controversy generated by the date rape joke he made in private at a Christmas drinks reception in Downing Street. Asked about the comment, which led to calls for his resignation, Cleverly told Sky News that his apology was “heartfelt” and that his actions as a minister showed he took violence against women and girls very seriously. He told the programme:

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.

My first visit as home secretary was to an investigation team investigating violence against women and girls, when I was foreign secretary I set a target that 80% of our aid has got to demonstrably have a positive effect for women and girls. I shouldn’t have said it and I apologised immediately …

I’m sorry because it clearly caused hurt, it’s potentially distracted from the work we were doing to tackle spiking to help predominantly women who are the victims of spiking and I regret that. But I’m absolutely determined to continue the work that I’ve been doing for years.

I will post more from his interviews shortly.

There is not much on the agenda today, but at 9.30am the Home Office is publishing more figures relating to the asylum claims backlog and at 11.30am we have got a No 10 lobby briefing.

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