Rishi Sunak’s Government is “playing fast and loose” with its claims about reducing the migration backlog, critics have said.

The Prime Minister also faced accusations from Labour that his claim to have cleared the legacy asylum backlog was a “barefaced lie”.

The Home Office on Monday said the Prime Minister’s “commitment of clearing the legacy asylum backlog has been delivered” and added it had processed more than 112,000 asylum cases overall in 2023.

Mr Sunak promised in December 2022 to abolish the “legacy backlog” of asylum applications made before June 2022.

But figures published by the Home Office on Tuesday show that 4,537 complex legacy applications were still “awaiting an initial decision” as of December 28.

Many of these cases involve asylum seekers presenting as children who are undergoing age verification, the Government department said.

The Government is playing fast and loose with the figures. The public will not be fooled by smoke and mirrors

Alp Mehmet, the chairman of Migration Watch UK, a think tank which argues for lower migration, said: “The Government is playing fast and loose with the figures. The public will not be fooled by smoke and mirrors.”

Mr Mehmet added that the UK’s grant rate for asylum applications was “a lenient exception compared to most of Europe and almost three times the rate in France” and questioned whether the Government knew where “the 25,550 who were refused asylum are now”.

The grant rate for final asylum decisions on fully completed cases in 2023 stood at 67%, lower than in 2022 and 2021 (76% and 72%).

He added: “The Home Office may have moved a few papers from the pending to the out-tray by giving thousands the benefit of the doubt but they have not done anything to dissuade other migrants from getting to the UK by whatever means they can, including in a small boat.”

Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, also said the Government’s claims they had cleared the backlog were “not true”.

On social media site X, the Labour frontbencher said: “Sunak claims to have cleared the asylum backlog. Not true.

“Not even cleared ‘legacy backlog’ – 4,500 cases not done, 17,000 ‘withdrawn’ by the Home Office but they’ve no idea where those people are.”

Her deputy Stephen Kinnock meanwhile described the Prime Minister’s claim as a “barefaced lie” and drew attention to what he described as the “never-ending” backlog of non-legacy asylum cases.

“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,” Mr Kinnock said on X.

The non-legacy backlog of UK asylum cases awaiting an initial decision – covering applications made on or after June 28 2022 – stood at 94,062 on December 28, up 3% from 91,076 on November 30.

The overall backlog of applications awaiting a decision, including both legacy and non-legacy cases, is 98,599: down 10% from the end of November and down 29% from its recent peak of 139,552 at the end of February 2023.

Downing Street insisted efforts to clear the asylum legacy backlog had “gone further” than what had initially been pledged by the Prime Minister, despite the 4,500 cases still awaiting a first decision.

We committed to clearing the backlog, that is what the Government has done

After being pressed about the accuracy of the Government’s claims by reporters, Rishi Sunak’s official spokesman said: “We committed to clearing the backlog, that is what the Government has done.

“We are being very transparent about what that entails.

“We have processed all of those cases and indeed gone further than the original commitment. We’re up to 112,000 decisions made overall.

“As a result of that process, there are a small minority of cases which are complex and which, because of our rigorous standards, require further work. But nonetheless, it is a significant piece of work by Home Office officials to process such huge numbers in a short period of time while retaining our rigorous safety standard.”

The Home Secretary James Cleverly earlier told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that it is “impossible” to say how long it will take to get through the rest of the outstanding asylum cases.

The Cabinet minister added: “You can see our track record of delivery, we have delivered over 112,000 processes, 112,000 applications this year. You know there are fewer than that left in the system.”

Elsewhere, the Refugee Council expressed concern about what had happened to refugees whose claims had been “just taken out of the backlog”.

Jon Featonby, chief policy analyst for the organisation, told Channel 4 News: “Of the 112,000 decisions that were made in 2023, there are 35,000 decisions – so around a third – where actually that decision wasn’t a grant or refusal but a claim has just been taken out of the backlog.

“The information doesn’t tell us whether it is because that person chose to withdraw the claim, or the Home Office withdrew it for them because they maybe hadn’t responded to a letter from the Home Office.

“What we are really concerned about at the Refugee Council is that we simply don’t know where those people are, or what has happened to them, and certainly we think that many of those people now will be at risk of exploitation.”

The total number of UK asylum caseworkers, based on headcount, stood at 2,475 as of December 24 2023, the latest Home Office figures show.

This is down very slightly from 2,485 at the end of November, but nearly double the figure a year earlier in December 2022, when it stood at 1,277.

The full-time equivalent (FTE) number of caseworkers as of December 24 was 2,405, down slightly from 2,420 in November, but again nearly double the figure a year earlier, which was 1,237.

The new figures also show that 16,430 initial decisions were made on asylum applications from December 1 to 28 2023, compared with 3,143 in the whole of December 2022.

Meanwhile, the Home Office said on Tuesday that the number of hotels used to house asylum seekers has decreased from 398 on October 22 2023 to 348 on December 17 2023.

The department stated that the volume of asylum applicants in hotels also decreased between the end of September and December 17 2023, but did not give a figure.