Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to enhance UK border security and immigration enforcement.

The Home Office’s priority is to deliver a safe and secure border and we will never compromise on this. Border Force maintain 100% checks for all scheduled arriving passengers into the UK and this will be continued during any period.

Border Force deploys to risk using tested, but continually assessed, intelligence and targeting techniques. Border Force does not publish information on operational activities. Doing so would publicise operational practices which would be used to assist in the evasion of customs controls and compromise border security.

Immigration Enforcement is taking robust action to tackle illegal migration through:

• returning more than 24,000 people in 2023 who have no right to be in the UK, including more than 5,500 Albanians;
• increasing enforcement visits, with 10,509 in the first 9 months of 2023 compared to 6,865 in the same period in 2022 and 5,576 people arrested linked to these compared to 2,175 in the previous year; and
• disrupting organised crime groups, resulting in 246 arrests of people smugglers in 2023.