James Cleverly has defended the Government over its claim to have delivered on Rishi Sunak’s pledge of clearing a backlog of asylum claims. 

Mr Sunak pledged in December 2022 to “abolish” the backlog of more than 91,000 outstanding “legacy” asylum cases older than June 2022 by the end of 2023.

The Home Office claimed the backlog had been cleared but officials also admitted that 4,500 of the 91,300 had been reviewed but not yet decided, claiming it was “impossible” to do so within the timescale.

Mr Cleverly insisted this morning that “every single one of those cases was addressed”. The Home Secretary told Times Radio: “In the vast majority of those cases a final decision was made either to grant or to not grant. 

“And where there were complicated circumstances, where there were discrepancies, where we needed to check on age or security or whatever, those are known as complex cases, there are 4,500 of those and we are not going to compromise on our border security or our safety checks for those people. 

“But we have cleared that backlog. They have all been processed and in addition to that of course we are still processing the applications that have come in since.” 

Labour said the Government’s claim to have cleared the legacy backlog was “false”.

You can follow the latest updates below and join the conversation in the comments section here.