Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 22 November 2023 to Question 2433 on Undocumented Migrants: English Channel, how many and what proportion of irregular migrants who arrived in small boats since 2018 are (a) still and (b) no longer in the UK.

The Home Office publishes statistics on small boat arrivals to the UK in the ‘Irregular migration to the UK statistics’ release. Data on whether arrivals are still in the UK or have left the UK is not published but some of the data in the ‘Irregular Migration to the UK detailed datasets’ may provide an indication of these:

• Data on the number of arrivals is available in table Irr_D01.
• Data on initial decisions from asylum applications of small boat arrivals by asylum case outcome is available in table Irr_D03.
• Data on outcomes from NRM referrals of small boat arrivals by NRM case outcome is available in table Irr_D05.

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.