House of Commons

Response from Sir Robert Chote to Stephen Kinnock MP – asylum backlogs

Dear Mr Kinnock,

Thank you for your letter of 15 June. You raised concerns about the use of asylum backlog statistics by Ministers and the definition of the asylum backlog.

You gave two examples of statements made recently by Ministers:

On 8 March, the Prime Minister said the asylum backlog had reduced by 6,000.
On 12 June, the Home Secretary said the asylum backlog had reduced by 17,000.

The Home Secretary’s statement of 12 June was initially unclear, but she clarified later in the debate that she was referring to the ‘legacy’ backlog of asylum applications. She had previously explained the distinction that the Home Office draws between ‘legacy’ and ‘flow’ backlogs – namely comprising applications submitted up to, and then on or after, 28 June 2022 – in a letter to the Home Affairs Committee of 29 January.

The Home Office publishes statistics on asylum applications awaiting a decision as part of its asylum and resettlement datasets and it has provided an additional breakdown on this basis since February 2023, following the letter to the Home Affairs Committee. As this is an additional breakdown, not a material change to the statistics, there is no requirement for this to be formally pre-announced by the department.

The figure cited by the Prime Minister was the legacy backlog as of the end of February. It had not been published at the time the Prime Minister used it and it was only included in an ad-hoc statistical release on 24 April. Statistics should be available publicly at the same time or as soon as possible after their use by Ministers or departments, and we welcome improvements that the Home Office has made since then to release publications to support Ministerial statements in a timely manner.

Incidentally, the Prime Minister said in his statement that the decline in the backlog was 6,000 people. This is likely an understatement as that was the decline in the number of outstanding applications, and some asylum applications involve more than one person.

Yours sincerely,

Sir Robert Chote
Chair

Response from Sir Robert Chote to Munira Wilson MP – ULEZ statistics

Correction 29/06/23:

On 16 June, Sir Robert Chote wrote to Munira Wilson MP in response to concerns about claims made by the Mayor of London regarding vehicle compliance with the Ultra-Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) in Outer London. In our letter, we stated that we were satisfied that the Mayor’s claim is consistent with the data collected by TfL at the time, namely that ‘nine out of 10 of those households in outer London who have a car are compliant’.

We wish to correct this reference. We are satisfied that data collected by TfL supports statements used in its press release that nine out of 10 cars seen driving on an average day in Outer London meet the ULEZ emissions standards.

As set out in TfL’s ULEZ compliance data additional information page, data on the compliance of households in Outer London who have a car are not available. Therefore, this statement made by the Mayor is not supported by publicly available data.

ENDS

Dear Ms Wilson,

Thank you for your letter of 13 April raising concerns about claims made by the Mayor of London regarding vehicle compliance with the Ultra-Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) in Outer London and seeking clarity on whether it would be appropriate for the Mayor to publish the figures underlying those claims.

The Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) has contacted the Mayor’s office and Transport for London (TfL), which assesses ULEZ compliance by cross-referencing camera images of number plates with DVLA records. We are satisfied that data collected by TfL at the time supports the Mayor’s claim that nine in 10 cars seen driving in outer London now meet ULEZ standards. However, data on households in outer London who have a car that meet ULEZ emissions standards are not available. The statement made by the Mayor relating to households in outer London is therefore not supported by publicly available data.

The data underlying the Mayor’s claim on cars driving in outer London were not available to the general public at the time, either from the Mayor’s office or from TfL. Users requesting clarification were provided with additional information, but that too was not made available on an equal basis to the general public. This is inconsistent with our principles of intelligent transparency and with the Code of Practice for Statistics. Like other organisations within the Greater London Authority, TfL voluntarily applies the Code as part of the Mayor’s commitment to transparency.

This case is one of several examples raised with us in which TfL has made statements or issued press releases based on unpublished TfL data or where data quoted are not provided with sufficient context. This prevents interested members of the public from being able to verify the figures, which can undermine trust in the organisations producing the analysis and their other outputs. While some additional information has now been published, I would urge the Mayor and TfL to make this material fully accessible to support understanding on what is a topic of high public interest.

By voluntarily applying the Code, TfL makes a commitment to producing analytical outputs that are of high quality and useful for supporting decisions. OSR has been engaging positively with analytical and communications colleagues in TfL who have been open to suggestions for improvements. TfL is working to further develop its understanding of the Code internally and OSR will continue to provide support and advice.

I am copying this letter to the Mayor of London and the following at TfL – Andy Lord (Commissioner), Howard Carter (General Counsel) and Matt Brown (Director of Communications and Corporate Affairs) to further support the case for the accessible publication of data used in public statements and press releases.

Yours sincerely,

Sir Robert Chote
Chair

Letter from Stephen Kinnock MP to Sir Robert Chote – asylum backlogs

Dear Sir Robert,

I write, with some regret, to raise fresh concerns about Ministers’ use of official statistics on the asylum backlog. These concerns are related to, but separate from, the issues raised late last year in my letter to you and in your helpful and informative response.

Firstly, on Monday of this week, the Home Secretary told the House that “the asylum initial decision backlog is down by 17,000”.

The ‘asylum backlog’ refers – according to the Home Office’s own definition – to ‘cases awaiting an initial decision’. According to the most recent quarterly statistics published by her Department – the backlog constitutes ‘133,607 cases (relating to 172,758 people)’ as of 31 March 2023.

Our reading of the figures suggests that the backlog has gone up, not down.

Asked to explain the Home Secretary’s claim, the Home Office pointed to an ‘ad-hoc statistical release’ published on 24 April and updated on 5 June. But these monthly data tables prove that – whether you compare the current number to the previous month or the previous quarter – the size of the backlog has risen, not fallen.

Equally, on 8 March the Prime Minister told the House of Commons that:

‘As a result of what we have done, there are now 6,000 fewer people in the asylum case load backlog.’

This appears to be another inaccurate statements to Parliament which is contradicted by their own official data.

Therefore please could you give an opinion on the following questions:

Is the view of the UK Statistics Authority that these comments by the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary were inaccurate?
Is it your view that Ministers should be using their own Government’s definition – and the long-standing definition – of the asylum backlog, which is ‘cases awaiting an initial decision’?

This brings me to me to my second concerns relating to the Government’s introduction of the so-called ‘legacy backlog’.

Since I wrote to you in December, the Home Office has made changes to the way it measures and reports on the asylum backlog. As far as I can see, the rationale for these changes has not been publicly explained. My concern is that these changes – together with multiple conflicting statements from Ministers about efforts to deal with the backlog – pose a clear risk of seriously undermining public confidence in the government’s use of official statistics.

The key issue relates to the Prime Minister’s commitment last December to ‘abolish’ the backlog of unresolved asylum cases. Following the Prime Minister’s statement in December, both he and the Home Secretary stated that the commitment to ‘abolish’ the asylum backlog in fact relates only to cases dating to before 28 June 2022. Yet, as stated earlier in this letter, this wording does not marry up with the official government definition.

The government has recently started to refer to these cases as the ‘legacy backlog’. The problem is that the term ‘legacy backlog’ appears to be a recent invention of Ministers, and the quarterly statistics released by the Home Office made no distinction between claims made before or after 28 June 2022, until the most recent release of 25 May 2023. In that release, no explanation was given for the reasons why the Department decided to change this way it reports data on outstanding asylum cases.

The only argument, of which I am aware, that could theoretically be made to support the creation of a new category of ‘legacy’ asylum cases is that significant changes to the way in which asylum claims are categorised and processed came into effect on 28 June 2022, pursuant to provisions in Section 12 of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022. Section 12 was brought into effect by changes to the Immigration Rules made in May 2022, which confirmed that the differential treatment of asylum claims would apply to claims made on or after 28 June 2022.

However, just last week the Home Office announced its decision to ‘pause’ implementation of these measures. In light of this decision, the basis for continuing to differentiate between claims made before and after 28 June 2022 appears non-existent.

In spite of this, Ministers have continued to explain the separate reporting of cases in the asylum backlog, based on whether they dated from before or after 28 June 2022, with reference to changes in the rules for processing claims which came not effect on that date.[1] Even if one took such arguments at face value before last week’s announcement, I cannot see how they are of any relevance now that the relevant changes to the immigration rules have now been suspended.

It is my understanding that the Code of Practice for Statistics requires government departments to explain the reasons for any changes in methodology or reporting, particularly in the context of the obligations to publish statistics that are accurate and relevant to members of the public. I have not been able to find any such explanation for the Home Office’s recent reporting changes in the public domain. Notably, the ‘user guide’ published by the department alongside its regular releases of immigration statistics has not been updated to reflect these changes.

I would therefore be grateful if you could offer an opinion on whether or not this change in the way asylum backlog data is reported meets the obligations set out in the Code of Practice for Statistics to publish the most relevant, appropriate data, and to ensure consistency of published data over time?

I would be grateful if you would look into these matters and send me your comments, including your responses to the specific questions above.

If you have any questions about this enquiry, please do not hesitate to contact me.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards,

Stephen Kinnock
Member of Parliament for Aberavon
Shadow Minister for Immigration

Footnotes

[1] On 14 June 2023, the Secretary of State told Parliament’s Home Affairs Committee that ‘it is very typical and proper to define a legacy backlog; that is when the NABA came into force.’ She later repeated the argument, saying: ‘I would say that we have a case load of cases, and you have to define them in different ways. There are different rules that apply to different cases’.

Response from Sir Robert Chote to Alistair Carmichael MP – displaced people

Dear Mr Carmichael,

Thank you for your letter of 10 March about the Home Secretary’s use of statistics on displaced people. In a statement to the House of Commons she said “there are 100 million people around the world who could qualify for protection under our current laws. Let us be clear: they are coming here.” She also wrote in the Daily Mail that “there are 100 million displaced people around the world, and likely billions more eager to come here if possible.”

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) does indeed estimate that there are more than 100 million forcibly displaced people around the world, which includes refugees, asylum-seekers, internally displaced people, and other people ‘in need of international protection’. But this is not an estimate of either the number of people who would qualify for asylum if they were to reach the UK or of the number of displaced people likely to seek asylum in the UK.

UNHCR statistics are not UK official statistics in which the UK Statistics Authority takes a direct interest. However, the Authority encourages ministers and other senior public figures to present numerical evidence from all kinds of sources clearly, so that the public can understand and verify any claims made.

Yours sincerely,

Sir Robert Chote
Chair

Letter from Dame Angela Eagle MP to Sir Robert Chote – national debt

Dear Sir Robert,

Misleading Government Social Media Content

I am writing to raise concerns over statistics used by the Chancellor of the Exchequer regarding the state of the public finances which I believe to be inaccurate and misleading.

Recently, the Chancellor has made misleading claims on public debt figures through his Twitter account.

On 25 April Mr Hunt said that headline debt levels are reducing by £53.7 billion by 2027/28.

However, Table A.9 of the OBR Economic and fiscal outlook published in March 2023 forecasts that public debt will rise between now and 2027/28.

And between the last two years of the forecast, 2026/27 and 2027/28, the national debt will rise by £90bn.

When clarification was sought by media outlets, it was suggested that the £53.7 billion figure refers to the change in the OBR’s projection for headline debt in 2027/28 relative to the OBR’s projection in the November 2022 Autumn Statement for that year – so the figure represents the gap between the two projections. This is not an accurate reflection of debt levels being reduced over time as claimed.

I am concerned that Government Ministers are using misleading statistics publicly regarding the economy, and believe it is critical that figures used are accurate.

I would welcome your view on the Government’s claim that headline debt levels are falling in cash terms.

I would be grateful for your verification of these figures, and your advice on the Government, and its Minsters’, continued use of them.

I look forward to your response.

With kind regards,

Dame Angela Eagle MP

Response from Sir Robert Chote to Emily Thornberry MP – crime and police statistics

Dear Ms Thornberry,

Thank you for your letters regarding the use of statistics on crime and policing by Ministers. You asked about a statement the Prime Minister made on 22 March about crime. You also asked about an interview in which the Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire discussed police recruitment.

The Prime Minister said that

“since the Conservatives came into power, crime is down 50 per cent”

This statement is an accurate description of estimates of total incidents of crime against individuals as measured by the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW), excluding fraud and computer misuse. Figure 1 [1] from the latest ONS bulletin at that time shows this trend since 1981.

As you highlight in your letter, the UK Statistics Authority has in the past advised that fraud and computer misuse should be included in statements about overall crime wherever possible. However, the CSEW only started asking questions related to these offences in 2015. The Prime Minister therefore used the most appropriate data source for comparing trends in the total level of crime since 2010.

Nevertheless, it would support public understanding if Ministers using this comparison were explicit in stating the offences excluded, or instead used figures relating to specific types of offences. The CSEW records a wide variety of offences which vary greatly in their severity.

In your letter of 18 April you asked us to look at statements on police recruitment levels made by the Minister of State for Crime, Policing and Fire, Chris Philp MP, during an interview on Good Morning Britain.

The Minister said

“If you take 2010 as the starting point – 145,000, that was the previous peak, March 2010 – when the figures come out next week, you’ll see that they are higher than that 145,000.”

He also said,

“I’m not going to speculate precisely, but it will be some margin higher, we’re talking about some thousands higher [than March 2010].”

You suggested these statements might have been made using knowledge of the statistics ahead of their scheduled publication date on 26 April, contrary to the Code of Practice for Statistics. We spoke with Home Office statisticians and the Minister’s office and found no evidence of that. The latest published police officer uplift statistics at the time of the interview showed that in December 2022 there were 145,658 police officers in England and Wales, and that the net increase due to the Police Uplift Program (PUP) since October 2022 was 1,420. From this information, and other management information^[2], it was reasonable to have inferred that the March 2010 figure could have been exceeded by several thousand.

Yours sincerely,

Sir Robert Chote
Chair

FOOTNOTES

[1]

^[2] As reported in the Office for Statistics Regulation’s July 2022 compliance assessment of the police uplift statistics, the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC), produces a monthly management information report and dashboard on the PUP for police forces and Ministers. Statisticians in the Home Office informed us that the last management information data the Minister had access to was from February 2023.

NOTES

The CSEW provides the best estimate of long-term trends in crime. As a household survey of individual adults, it does not provide estimates for crimes against businesses (such as non-domestic burglary), societal crimes such as drug taking, or crimes against children.
There is a break in the CSEW time series because of the suspension of face-to-face interviewing between March 2020 and October 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data for the year ending September 2022 are based on interviews conducted since the resumption of fieldwork in October 2021, measuring experiences of crime in the 12 months before the interview. This means crimes recorded in the most recent estimates could have occurred as far back as October 2020 and as recently as August 2022.

Letter from Munira Wilson MP to Sir Robert Chote – ULEZ statistics

Dear Sir Robert

Re: Use of statistics on the Ultra Low Emissions Zone

I am writing to raise concerns about the claims made by the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, regarding the levels of compliance of vehicles in outer London with the Ultra Low Emission Zone that is due to expand in August.

Sadiq Khan claims that 9 in 10 cars seen driving in outer London now meet the Ultra Low Emission Zone standards, but these figures are misleading. Initially, the figure was 85% of vehicles were compliant, but TfL and the Mayor have now increased this claim.

Furthermore, at the London Assembly on the 23rd March, the Mayor claimed that “new data shows that nine out of 10 of those households in outer London who have a car are compliant, so very few have non-compliant cars in outer London”. This is a significant misrepresentation of TfL’s own claims.

Liberal Democrat analysis has suggested that up to a quarter of vehicles registered in outer London could be non-compliant with ULEZ, while TfL’s own documents suggest that outer London compliance is “62% to 72%”.

It is irresponsible for the Mayor of London to use figures to justify a policy when those figures do not seem to be backed up by the evidence. Misuse, or in this case rejection, of statistics by politicians can lead to pressure for policies that are not supported by the data.

The Government has confirmed that TfL has a data sharing agreement in place with the DVLA to provide information about UK registered vehicles. The Mayor should therefore be able to provide accurate information regarding the numbers of vehicles registered in the new ULEZ.

I therefore ask that you investigate the Mayor of London and offer your guidance on whether or not it would be appropriate for him to publish those figures.

I look forward to your response on this matter.

Yours sincerely

MUNIRA WILSON MP

MP for Twickenham

Response from Sir Robert Chote to Stephen Kinnock MP – asylum backlogs

Dear Mr Kinnock,

Thank you for your letter of 19 December. You raised concerns about inconsistent claims made by government Ministers on the size of the backlog of undecided asylum applications. I apologise for the delay in responding, as we were attempting to confirm with Ministers the basis of the figures cited.

You gave three examples of statements made in December 2022:

On 13 December the Prime Minister said that the current backlog was half the size that it was when Labour was in office.^[1]
Sarah Dines, Minister for Safeguarding, said on 14 December that over half a million legacy cases had been left by the last Labour government.^[2]
On 19 December Robert Jenrick, the Minister for Immigration, said that 450,000 legacy cases had been left by the last Labour government.^[3]

In 2006, the Home Office embarked on a clearance exercise that set out to deal with the then backlog of asylum applications. In May 2010, at the time of the General Election, this exercise was still underway. This work is discussed in detail in the April – July 2011 report of the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee^[4] which you highlighted in your letter. The Committee took evidence from the Chief Executive of the UK Border Agency that the clearance exercise was completed by March 2011, by which time 500,500 cases had been reviewed^[5]. Although the backlog included some current applications, 56% were duplications, errors or applications moved to the ‘controlled archive’. Those moved to this controlled archive often involved applicants who were untraceable, deceased or had become an EU citizen through another channel.

In March 2013, a subsequent report by the Home Affairs Committee^[6] criticised the quality of data provided by the UK Border Agency to the Committee. The Committee referred to a 2012 report by the Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration^[7], which found that during the backlog clearance exercise, regular checks were not being carried out on applications before they were moved to the controlled archive. This means that some of the archived applications should have remained live, further reducing the quality of the data.

Given the data quality issues at that time, it would not be reasonable to suggest that this management information from the UK Border Agency accurately represented half a million genuine undecided asylum applications then in the backlog.

The most appropriate source of statistics on asylum applications awaiting a decision are produced by the Home Office and reported quarterly^[8]. These tell us that the number of applications awaiting a decision was 18,954 in June 2010^[9]. This is the earliest published data and coincides closely with the 2010 General Election. The same spreadsheet also provides the latest number of undecided asylum applications which was 166,261 at the end of December 2022. This means that during the period from June 2010 to December 2022 there has been a net increase in undecided asylum applications of 147,307, not a halving.

You cited figures from the Institute for Government, which are drawn from this same source, and from the House of Commons Library, which was using statistics on ‘work in progress’. In addition to applications awaiting a decision, the ‘work in progress’ measure also includes cases awaiting an appeal outcome and awaiting deportation.

The statements by Ministers that you asked about do not reflect the position shown by the Home Office’s statistics. I have engaged with their offices to bring this to their attention and share the UK Statistics Authority’s expectations for the use of official statistics and data in public debate.

I am copying this letter to the Minister for Immigration.

Yours sincerely,

Sir Robert Chote

FOOTNOTES

[1] Illegal Immigration, Hansard, 13 December 2022

[2] Asylum Seeker Employment and the Cost of Living, Hansard, 14 December 2022

[3] Asylum Backlog, Hansard, 19 December 2022

[4] The work of the UK Border Agency (April–July 2011) (PDF), Home Affairs Committee, 1 November 2011

[5] Correspondence from UK Border Agency to the Chair of the Committee, Home Affairs Committee, 12 September 2011

[6] The work of the UK Border Agency (July-September 2012) (PDF), Home Affairs Committee, 25 March 2013

[7] ICIBI report of legacy asylum and migration cases, November 2012, Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, 22 November 2012

[8] Asylum and resettlement datasets, Asy_Do3: Asylum applications awaiting a decision, Home Office, last updated 23 February 2023

[9] The figure for 2010 is not straightforward to access due the formatting of this spreadsheet. It can be viewed by clearing or adjusting the filter in cell B3 on sheet ‘Asy_d03’.

Letter from Emily Thornberry MP to Sir Robert Chote – crime statistics

Dear Sir Robert,

During Prime Minister’s Questions in the House of Commons today, Rishi Sunak asserted that

“since the Conservatives came into power, crime is down 50 per cent.”

As you will be aware, your predecessor was forced to issue a reprimand in February last year, after a similar claim was made in Parliament by the former Prime Minister, who – like Mr Sunak today – wrongly excluded fraud and computer misuse from an assertion about what had happened over recent years to the total levels of crime.

Given that the same error has now been made at the despatch box by two Prime Ministers in the space of just over a year, I wonder if you would consider writing to Mr Sunak not just urging him to avoid repetition of his misleading statement, but also to order an internal inquiry into how this kind of mistake was allowed to recur so soon after the UK Statistics Authority’s last reprimand to Downing Street on the subject.

As you are well aware, fraud is now the UK’s most commonly-experienced crime, and it does a disservice both to the millions of victims of that pernicious crime and to the public as a whole when Prime Ministers choose to ignore it in their statements to Parliament. It would be greatly appreciated if you could advise the current incumbent to take more care in the future.

I am grateful in advance to you for looking into this matter.

Yours sincerely,

The Rt Hon Emily Thornberry MP
Shadow Attorney General

Response from Sir Robert Chote to Stephen Kinnock MP – asylum backlogs

Related links

Response from Sir Robert Chote to Munira Wilson MP – ULEZ statistics

Correction 29/06/23:

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Letter from Stephen Kinnock MP to Sir Robert Chote – asylum backlogs

Footnotes

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Response from Sir Robert Chote to Alistair Carmichael MP – displaced people

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Letter from Dame Angela Eagle MP to Sir Robert Chote – national debt

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Response from Sir Robert Chote to Emily Thornberry MP – crime and police statistics

FOOTNOTES

NOTES

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Letter from Emily Thornberry MP to Sir Robert Chote – crime and police statistics

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Letter from Munira Wilson MP to Sir Robert Chote – ULEZ statistics

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Response from Sir Robert Chote to Stephen Kinnock MP – asylum backlogs

FOOTNOTES

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Letter from Emily Thornberry MP to Sir Robert Chote – crime statistics

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