– in the House of Commons at 4:57 pm on 27 March 2023.
Stephen Kinnock
Shadow Minister (Home Office) (Immigration)
4:57,
27 March 2023
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. On
“the backlog…is half the size that it was when Labour was in office”.—[Official Report,
Vol. 724, c. 903.]
Six days later, the Minister for Immigration went even further, claiming at the same Dispatch Box that
“the backlog of cases was 450,000 when the last Labour Government handed over to us.”—[Official Report,
Vol. 725, c. 8.]
Other Government Members have repeated those claims. I suspected that those claims were highly questionable, so on
I am pleased to inform the House that the chief executive of the UK Statistics Authority responded to my request on Thursday. His letter to me is crystal clear. The asylum backlog when Labour left office in 2010 was not in the hundreds of thousands; it was 18,954. Under the Conservatives, it is now 166,261—more than eight times larger than it was in 2010. The UK Statistics Authority is using the Home Office’s own statistics, so it is somewhat odd that the Ministers did not know that they had been playing fast and loose with the facts.
I would be grateful for your advice, Madam Deputy Speaker, on how you feel Ministers should go about apologising to our constituents and correcting the record at the earliest possible opportunity, in compliance with their obligations under paragraph 1.3(c) of the ministerial code.
Rosie Winterton
Deputy Speaker (First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving me notice of his intention to raise his point of order. He is aware that the contents of Ministers’ contributions in the House are not a matter for the Chair, but he is right to say that the ministerial code requires Ministers to correct any inadvertent errors in answers to parliamentary questions at the earliest opportunity. As it happens, Ministers from the Home Office are present and will have heard—[Interruption.] Excuse me. The Ministers will have heard what he had to say, and I am sure that if they feel there is anything that needs to be corrected, they will do that at the earliest opportunity. I am sure that if the hon. Gentleman wishes to raise any further issues, the Table Office will advise him on how he can pursue them. I think we will leave it at that.
Yvette Cooper
Shadow Secretary of State for the Home Department
Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Given that two of the relevant Ministers were sitting in the Chamber at the time, may I ask whether you have ever heard of a situation in which it is abundantly clear from evidence from the UK Statistics Authority that Ministers have given incorrect information to Parliament and they have chosen not to correct it straight away?
Rosie Winterton
Deputy Speaker (First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means)
There is no obligation on Ministers who are in the Chamber to respond. [Interruption.] Could we have a bit of quiet, please? Ministers may wish to look at what has been said and come back, but, as I have said, it is up to them. It is clear what is in the ministerial code, and I am sure that the points have been heard. I suggest that we now move on.
If you've ever seen inside the Commons, you'll notice a large table in the middle - upon this table is a box, known as the dispatch box. When members of the Cabinet or Shadow Cabinet address the house, they speak from the dispatch box. There is a dispatch box for the government and for the opposition. Ministers and Shadow Ministers speak to the house from these boxes.
The Deputy speaker is in charge of proceedings of the House of Commons in the absence of the Speaker.
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The Conservatives are a centre-right political party in the UK, founded in the 1830s. They are also known as the Tory party.
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