Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many failed asylum seekers have been deported from the UK since 2020.

The Home Office publishes statistics on the number of returns from the UK in the ‘Immigration Statistics Quarterly Release’. Data on asylum-related returns are published in table Ret_05 of the ‘Returns Summary Tables’ with the latest data up to the end of December 2021.

Asylum-related returns relate to cases where there has been an asylum claim at some stage prior to the return. This will include asylum seekers whose asylum claims have been refused and who have exhausted any rights of appeal, those returned under third-country provisions, as well as those granted asylum/protection but removed for other reasons (such as criminality).

The term ‘deportations’ refers to a legally-defined subset of returns, which are enforced either following a criminal conviction, or when it is judged that a person’s removal from the UK is conducive to the public good. The published statistics refer to enforced returns which include deportations, as well as cases where a person has breached UK immigration laws, and those removed under other administrative and illegal entry powers that have declined to leave voluntarily. Figures on deportations, which are a subset of enforced returns, are not separately available.