Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government how many people entered the UK legally on a visa each year from 2015 to 2022; and of those, how many have remained in the UK illegally by overstaying their visa.

The Home Office publishes data on entry clearance visas in the ‘Immigration System Statistics quarterly release’. Data on visas granted are published in table Vis_D02 of the ‘Entry clearance visa applications and outcomes’ detailed datasets. Information on how to use the dataset can be found in the ‘Notes’ page of the workbook. The latest data relates to Q4 (October to December) 2022. Additionally, the Home Office publishes a high-level overview of the data in the ‘Entry clearance visas summary tables’. The ‘contents’ sheet contains an overview of all available data on visas.

Please note that the published Home Office entry clearance visa statistics show the number of visa applications and outcomes, but this may not necessarily equal the total number of individuals arriving in the UK on visas (for example, some visas may be unused, or some individuals may apply for more than one visa in a given period).

The Home Office also publishes data on the number of instances of individuals either departing late or having no record of departure against their leave in the published ‘Reports on statistics relating to exit checks’, with the latest data relating to the year ending March 2020. Please note, the data cannot tell us the number of 'overstayers' as some people may have departed on time but not been picked up in the data (for example those leaving the UK via the Common Travel Area from the UK to Ireland).

Information on future Home Office statistical release dates can be found in the ‘Research and statistics calendar’.