Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many irregular migrants who have (a) been refused asylum and (b) are at the further submissions stage were in receipt of legal aid on 3 June 2025; and what the total cost was for the provision of legal aid for such irregular migrants in each of the last four years.

I welcome the Hon Member to her new role, and I wish her well representing the great people of Runcorn and Helsby.

The Cabinet Office’s Guide to Parliamentary Work states that: “There is an advisory cost limit known as the disproportionate cost threshold which is the level above which departments can decide not to answer a written question. The current disproportionate cost threshold is £850.”

I regret that the information she has requested is not currently available from published statistics, and would require a manual trawl of case files to identify and collate, something that could only be done at disproportionate cost.