Home Secretary James Cleverly has insisted the government has met its target to clear the asylum backlog though admitted there were a "small number" of cases which hadn't been processed. Report by Alibhaiz. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00 We made a commitment to clear that legacy backlog. Those were applications that were made before the
00:06 28th of June 2022. We said that we would process them all. We have processed them all. In a small
00:14 number of cases, particularly complicated cases where there are disputes about age or security
00:19 concerns, there is further work to do. In some instances there may be disputes, in some instances
00:24 there may be security concerns. What we're not going to do is we're not going to compromise
00:30 the integrity of the process or the security of the country by trying to rush this. We'll do it
00:35 properly. That said, we are now processing applications much more quickly than in the past
00:42 and we will make sure that we don't have a backlog built up like that again. Rwanda is important. We
00:47 want to get it on the statute books. We want to make sure. And so for those colleagues who want
00:52 to work with the government to make sure it is robust and effective, of course we'll work with
00:57 them. But for those people like Keir Starmer who are trying to prevent this legislation even getting
01:04 on the statute books, we will fight tooth and nail to make sure this important piece of legislation