Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many irregular migrants have (a) arrived in small boats and (b) been deported since 2018.
The Home Office publishes statistics on small boat arrivals to the UK in the ‘Irregular migration to the UK statistics’ release. Data on small boat arrivals by year is published in table Irr_D01 of the ‘Irregular migration to the UK detailed datasets’ with the latest data up to the end of June 2023.
The Home Office also publishes statistics on the number of returns from the UK in table Ret_D01 of the ‘Returns detailed datasets’, as part of the ‘Immigration System Statistics Quarterly Release’. However, this data includes all returns, not just returns of small boat arrivals.
Official statistics published by the Home Office are kept under review in line with the Code of Practice for Statistics, taking into account a number of factors including user needs, as well as quality and availability of data.