Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, on 1 October 2022, how many full time equivalent Border Force personnel were deployed to dedicated teams responsible for preventing and detecting the illegal importation of (a) drugs, (b) excise goods (c) firearms, knives and other offensive weapons, and (d) items in violation of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.

Border Force resource is deployed not just to carry out essential checks at the border, but also to detect harmful goods and safeguard vulnerable and exploited individuals.

There is not a specific number of mandated checks for Border Force officers to conduct every day. Most checks will be conducted according to risk levels or intelligence.

Border Force does not routinely publish the level of data relating to the number of customs interdictions undertaken by Government officials in the UK, and at specific geographic locations or ports.

However, data, including information related to the seizure of prohibited and restricted goods, is published quarterly on the.gov.uk website.

The latest release of information can be found at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/border-force-transparency-data-q2-2021.