Rishi Sunak’s claim to have cleared asylum backlog branded ‘misleading’
The government is claiming victory in clearing the backlog of asylum claims – but that has been described as “misleading” as thousands are still waiting for a final decision.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak pledged in December 2022 that he would “abolish” the legacy backlog of asylum claims made before 28 June of that year, with the Home Office being given the target of the end of 2023.
On Monday, the department said the pledge had been “delivered”, having processed more than 112,000 asylum claims overall in 2023.
There were more than 92,000 asylum claims made before 28 June 2022 requiring a decision, but Labour has said the government’s claim that all of those cases have been cleared is “false”.
The Home Office said on Monday that all cases in the legacy backlog have been reviewed, but added that “4,500 complex cases have been highlighted that require additional checks or investigation for a final decision to be made”.
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Such cases typically involve “asylum seekers presenting as children – where age verification is taking place; those with serious medical issues; or those with suspected past convictions, where checks may reveal criminality that would bar asylum”, the department added.
It is understood that the Home Office has processed about 25,200 newer asylum claims, on top of the 86,800 decisions in legacy cases, which means the provisional number of total decisions made overall in the year reaches 112,000.
As many decisions as possible were made in the legacy backlog, according to officials, and the outstanding cases are due to a refusal to compromise security.
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They pointed to efforts to clear some of the newer cases as evidence of the department’s commitment to tackling the overall backlog.
The prime minister said in a statement that the department’s efforts are “saving the taxpayer millions of pounds in expensive hotel costs, reducing strain on public services and ensuring the most vulnerable receive the right support”.
However, the CEO of the Refugee Council, Enver Solomon, said it is “misleading for the government to claim that the legacy backlog has been cleared as there are thousands still waiting for a decision”.
“After mismanaging the asylum system for so many years the government was right to clear the backlog but was wrong to do it in a way that has failed to see the face behind the case and instead has treated people simply as statistics rather than with the care and compassion they deserve,” he added.
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Labour’s shadow immigration minister also accused the government of making “false” claims about clearing the asylum backlog.
Stephen Kinnock said: “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.
“Meanwhile Rishi Sunak’s promise made a year ago to end asylum hotel use has been disastrously broken – with a 20% increase to 56,000, costing the British taxpayer more than £2bn a year.
“This is yet more evidence of an asylum system broken by the Conservatives.”
Stephen Kinnock claims asylum system is ‘broken’
The government’s announcement comes after months of fears that the prime minister’s target would not be achieved.
In February last year, the Home Office said thousands of asylum seekers would be sent questionnaires which could be used to speed up a decision on their claims, and about 12,000 people from Afghanistan, Syria, Eritrea, Libya and Yemen, who had applied for asylum in the UK and were waiting for a decision, were understood to be eligible under the policy.
In June, the National Audit Office (NAO) said efforts to clear the backlog needed to significantly increase to clear the backlog and questioned whether the plans were sustainable.
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The spending watchdog also estimated £3.6bn was spent on asylum support in 2022-23, which amounted to almost double the previous year.
The Home Office said more caseworkers had been tasked with processing applications, which was “tripling productivity to ensure more illegal migrants are returned to their country of origin, quicker”.
But the department’s top civil servant, Sir Matthew Rycroft, revealed in a letter to MPs that just 1,182 migrants who had crossed the Channel had been returned to their home country since 2020, out of a total of more than 111,800 who arrived in that time period.
The majority of those returned were from Albania, with whom the UK has a returns agreement.
In an appearance before the Commons Liaison Committee in December, the prime minister was unable to say when the remaining overall backlog of asylum claims would be cleared, which continued to rise and stood at 91,076 as of the end of November, not including legacy cases.
Lawmakers in the US states of Minnesota and Alabama filed companion bills to identical existing bills that if passed into law, would allow each state to buy Bitcoin.
The Minnesota Bitcoin Act, or HF 2946, was introduced to the state’s House by Republican Representative Bernie Perryman on April 1, following an identical bill introduced on March 17 by GOP state Senator Jeremy Miller.
Meanwhile, on the same day in Alabama, Republican state Senator Will Barfoot introduced Senate Bill 283, while a bi-partisan group of representatives led by Republican Mike Shaw filed the identical House Bill 482, which allows for the state to invest in crypto, but essentially limits it to Bitcoin (BTC).
Twin Alabama bills don’t explicitly name Bitcoin
Minnesota’s Bitcoin Act would allow the state’s investment board to invest state assets in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies and permit state employees to add crypto to retirement accounts.
It would also exempt crypto gains from state income taxes and give residents the option to pay state taxes and fees with Bitcoin.
Source: Bitcoin Laws
The twin Alabama bills don’t explicitly identify Bitcoin, but would limit the state’s crypto investment into assets that have a minimum market value of $750 billion, a criterion that only Bitcoin currently meets.
26 Bitcoin reserve bills now introduced in the US
Introducing identical bills is not uncommon in the US and is typically done to speed up the bicameral legislative process so laws can pass more quickly.
Bills to create a Bitcoin reserve have been introduced in 26 US states, with Arizona currently the closest to passing a law to make one, according to data from the bill tracking website Bitcoin Laws.
Arizona currently leads in the US state Bitcoin reserve race. Source: Bitcoin Laws
Pennsylvania was one of the first US states to introduce a Bitcoin reserve bill, in November 2024. However, the initiative was reportedly eventually rejected, with similar bills also killed in Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming.
Related: North Carolina bills would add crypto to state’s retirement system
Montana, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, South Dakota and Wyoming are the five states thathave rejected Bitcoin reserve initiatives. Source: Bitcoin Laws
According to a March 3 report by Barron’s, “red states” like Montana have faced setbacks to the Bitcoin reserve initiatives amid political confrontations between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.
Additional reporting by Helen Partz.
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Update (April 3, 5:43 am UTC): This article has been updated to add information on the STABLE Act and GENIUS Act.
The US House Financial Services Committee has passed a Republican-backed stablecoin framework bill, which will now head to the House floor for a full vote.
The Committee passed the Stablecoin Transparency and Accountability for a Better Ledger Economy, or STABLE Act, with a 32-17 vote on April 2, with six Democrats voting in favor.
The bill was introduced on Feb. 6 by committee Chair French Hill and the chair of its Digital Assets Subcommittee, Bryan Steil — reportedly drafted with the help of the world’s largest stablecoin issue, Tether.
Source: Financial Services GOP
The bill would provide rules around payment stablecoins, a crypto token tied to a currency such as the US dollar, and aims to ensure issuers give information about their business and how they back their tokens.
During an earlier markup session, the committee’s leading Democrat, Maxine Waters, who later voted against the bill, criticized her Republican peers for “setting an unacceptable and dangerous precedent” with the STABLE Act.
She said President Donald Trump could use the bill to allow his family’s stablecoin to be used in government payments, and argued the bill validates Trump “and his insiders’ efforts to write rules of the road that will enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else.”
In late March, the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial crypto venture launched a stablecoin, World Liberty Financial USD (USD1). Meanwhile, the US Housing Department, which oversees social housing, was reportedly looking to experiment with using stablecoins for some of its functions.
Stablecoin GENIUS Act also weaves through Congress
Other stablecoin-related bills are also working their way through Congress, including the Republican-led Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins, or GENIUS Act, which lays out oversight and reserve rules for issuers.
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The US Senate Banking Committee voted through the GENIUS Act in an 18-6 vote on March 13, after Senator Bill Hagerty, one of the bill’s co-sponsors, updated it following consultation with the Committee’s Democrats.
Before the vote, Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand said the updated GENIUS Act made “significant improvements to a number of important provisions” in areas such as consumer protections and authorized stablecoin issuers.
Both the STABLE Act and GENIUS Act will now wait until debate time on the floor of the House and Senate, respectively, before they head for a floor vote.
Crypto journalist Eleanor Terrett reported on X that two unnamed crypto lobbyists said there is likely to be “a coordinated push behind the scenes over the next few weeks to get the two bills to mirror each other, as there are still some differences between them.”
Doing so would “avoid having to set up a so-called conference committee which is formed so members from both chambers can negotiate to create a final version of the bill everyone agrees on,” she added.
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Tulip Siddiq has told Sky News her “lawyers are ready” to handle any formal questions about allegations she is involved in corruption in Bangladesh.
Asked whether she regrets apparent links with the Bangladeshi Awami League political party, Ms Siddiq said “why don’t you look at my legal letter and see if I have any questions to answer… [the Bangladeshi authorities] have not once contacted me and I’m waiting to hear from them”.
The London MP resigned as a Treasury minister in January after being named in several corruption inquiries in Bangladesh.
In her first public comments since leaving government, Ms Siddiq said “there’s been allegations for months on end and no one has contacted me”.
Last month, the interim leader of Bangladesh told Sky News the MP had “wealth left behind” in the country “and should be made responsible”.
Lawyers acting for Ms Siddiq wrote to the Bangladeshi Anti Corruption Commission (ACC) several weeks ago saying the allegations were “false and vexatious”.
The letter said the ACC must put questions to Ms Siddiq “by no later than 25 March 2025” or “we shall presume that there are no legitimate questions to answer”.
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Staff from the NCA visited Bangladesh as part of initial work to support the interim government in the country.
In a post online today, the former minister said the deadline had expired and the authorities had not replied.
Sky News has approached the Bangladeshi government for comment.
The allegations against Ms Siddiq are focused on links to her aunt Sheikh Hasina – who served as the prime minister of Bangladesh for 20 years.
Ms Hasina was forced to flee the country in August following weeks of deadly protests.
She is accused of becoming an autocrat, with politically-motivated arrests, extra-judicial killings and other abuses allegedly happening on her watch. Hasina claims it’s all a political witch hunt.
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Ms Siddiq was found to have lived in several London properties that had links back to the Awami League political party that her aunt still leads.
She referred herself to the prime minister’s standards adviser Sir Laurie Magnus who said he had “not identified evidence of improprieties” but added it was “regrettable” Ms Siddiq had not been more alert to the “potential reputational risks” of the ties to her aunt.
Ms Siddiq said continuing in her role would be “a distraction” for the government but insisted she had done nothing wrong.
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