Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many people have applied for asylum after arriving on a short term visitor visa in each year since 2015.

The Home Office publishes data on asylum in the ‘Immigration System Statistics Quarterly Release’. Data on the entry method of all individuals seeking asylum is not published. However, analysis from the Migrant journey: 2022 report estimates that around 14% of people claiming asylum in 2022 held another form of leave within 7 days of lodging their application.

Additionally, the Home Office publishes data on the proportion of people who are known to have departed the UK before their visa expired in the ‘Reports on statistics relating to exit checks’. Data broken down by visa type are published in table 1 of the Exit Checks data tables. The latest data relates to the year ending March 2020.

Information on future Home Office statistical release dates can be found in the ‘Research and statistics calendar’.