Conservative party deputy chairs’ resignation letter repeats misleading ‘100,000 migrants’ claim

In a joint letter to the Prime Minister resigning from their roles as deputy chairmen of the Conservative party, Lee Anderson MP and Brendan Clarke-Smith MP repeated the misleading claim that a Labour government would “bring around 100,000 extra asylum seekers as part of a deal with the European Union”.

We’ve contacted both MPs about this figure. Mr Clarke-Smith confirmed that it is based on Conservative party analysis we’ve written about numerous times in recent months, and found to be inaccurate.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has previously said Labour would seek a returns agreement with the EU, but there’s no reliable way of knowing the number of migrants it might involve, and the party has said it has no plans to join the EU agreement on which the Conservative analysis is based. 

Even if the UK were to participate in the EU agreement, or one operating on a similar basis, the Conservative calculation misinterprets what the agreement established in June last year would involve. 

Oxford University’s Migration Observatory has also told us: “The claim that a returns deal with the EU would mean the UK accepting 100,000 asylum seekers from Europe is incorrect: there are no two ways about it.”

We’ve seen different variations of this claim made at least 15 times in recent months, and have previously written to the Prime Minister, the Conservative party and several of its MPs—including Mr Anderson on a previous occasion—asking them to stop using this figure, but have received no response.