Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the impact of the levels of immigration in the last year on employment rates among UK-born workers.

Answered by Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent - Baroness in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)

The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority.

Please see the letter attached from the National Statistician and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority.

Emma Rourke | Acting National Statistician

The Lord Davies of Gower

House of Lords

London

SW1A 0PW

16 July 2025

Dear Lord Davies of Gower,

As Acting National Statistician, I am responding to your Parliamentary Question asking what assessment has been made of the impact of the levels of immigration in the last year on employment rates among UK-born workers (HL9326).

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) estimates the employment rates of people born in the UK and people not born in the UK from the Labour Force Survey (LFS), which is a survey of people resident in households in the UK.

According to LFS estimates, the employment rate for people born in the UK for the three-month period January to March 2025 was 74.6%. This was 0.2 percentage points higher than the equivalent employment rate one year earlier. Meanwhile, the employment rate for people born outside of the UK increased by 1.7 percentage points to 76.6% over the same period.

As the LFS does not collect information on the length of time people born outside of the UK have been residents, it is not possible to provide estimates of the employment rate for recent immigrants.

The ongoing challenges with response rates, response levels and weighting approach mean that labour market statistics based on the LFS are subject to increased volatility and are considered ’official statistics in development’ until further review.

Yours sincerely,

Emma Rourke

Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government how many incidents of shoplifting were recorded in each of the past five years; and how many resulted in a charge or summons.

Answered by Lord Hanson of Flint - Minister of State (Home Office)

The Home Office collects and publishes information on the number of notifiable offences and their outcomes.

The table below show the volume of the shop theft offences outcomes recorded by the police in the years from 2020 to 2024 and how many of those resulted in a charge or summons.

Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the remarks by Lord Hanson of Flint on 10 July (HL Deb col 1487), whether there have been any instances of the General Data Protection Regulation or other data protection legislation preventing the Home Office from removing foreign criminals from the UK.

Answered by Lord Hanson of Flint - Minister of State (Home Office)

The UK’s data protection legislation allows for personal data to be processed to pursue legitimate aims.

In particular, the international transfers regimes, which this Government recently improved through the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025, allows for personal data to be transferred to third countries where that is necessary for important reasons of public interest, including for immigration control and law enforcement.

Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the prevalence of the underreporting of (1) domestic abuse, (2) sexual violence, and (3) hate crimes.

Answered by Lord Hanson of Flint - Minister of State (Home Office)

The best measure of Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG), including domestic abuse and sexual violence, is prevalence as reported through the CSEW because this is anonymous, includes crimes not reported to the police and is unaffected by changes in levels of reporting to the police or police recording practices.

The gap between police reports of domestic abuse and sexual violence and the number of victims and survivors estimated by the CSEW means there is a significant number of unidentified cases.

As part of our unprecedented mission to tackle the national emergency of VAWG we have worked with the ONS to develop a new combined metric to better capture the scale of these crimes for the first time.

For our forthcoming Strategy for tackling Violence Against Women and Girls we will use a broad suite of metrics to provide a more comprehensive understanding of VAWG across Government and society.

Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government what proportion of reported shoplifting offences result in police attendance.

Answered by Lord Hanson of Flint - Minister of State (Home Office)

Data published by the NPCC (Policing Retail Crime Action Plan shows early impact), from a dip sample of 1,500 shoplifting incidents in December 2023, show that police attended:

• 60% of incidents where violence was used, with 16% of forces reporting 100% attendance for this type of incident.

• 76% of incidents where a suspect had been detained, with 21% of forces reporting 100% attendance.

Our Safer Streets Summer Initiative will see increased police patrols and local action in over 500 town centres this summer. As part of our Safer Streets Mission, we are committed to restoring neighbourhood policing, and as a result of our £200 million investment, we will see an additional 3,000 neighbourhood officers and PCSOs on the beat in communities across the country this year.

In the Crime and Policing Bill, introduced to Parliament on 25 February, we brought a new offence of assaulting a retail worker to protect the hardworking and dedicated staff that work in stores. We are also repealing legislation which makes shop theft of and below £200 a summary-only offence, sending a clear message that any level of shop theft is illegal and will be taken seriously.

To help tackle retail crime, we will provide £5 million over the next three years to continue to fund a specialist analysis team within Opal, the national policing intelligence unit for serious organised acquisitive crime.

We will also invest £2 million over the next three years in the National Business Crime Centre which provides a resource for both police and businesses to learn, share and support each other to prevent and combat crime.

Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government what analysis they have conducted on whether the current visa system is incentivising employers to recruit from overseas rather than invest in training UK-based workers.

Answered by Lord Hanson of Flint - Minister of State (Home Office)

The Home Office’s Immigration White Paper, published 12 May, looked in depth at the flaws in the previous Government’s visa system that had incentivised employers to recruit from overseas rather than investing in training UK-based workers and set out proposals for extensive reform of that system.

Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have to continue with the immigration reforms introduced by the Home Secretary as part of the Plan for Change.

Answered by Lord Hanson of Flint - Minister of State (Home Office)

The Home Office’s Immigration White Paper, published on 12 May, set out proposed reforms to restore order, control and fairness to the legal migration system, reduce net migration, and promote economic growth.

On 1 July changes to the Immigration Rules were set out to deliver the first set of reforms:

• raising the skilled worker visa threshold back to degree level – when it comes to immigration, skilled must mean skilled.
• introducing a time-limited, interim Temporary Shortage List - unlike its predecessors, it is a genuinely temporary list, providing time-limited access to the immigration system where it’s proven that it’s needed.
• closing the social care worker visa route to overseas recruitment – putting further protections in place for individuals exploited by the route.

Work is underway to deliver the wider measures announced in the White Paper with further updates to follow in due course. We will set out further measures around asylum and border security later this year.

Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the remarks by Lord Hanson of Flint on 22 July (HL Deb col 135), on what basis they calculated that 35,000 people who arrived in the UK specifically by small boats were removed last year.

Answered by Lord Hanson of Flint - Minister of State (Home Office)

I would like to correct a statement I made in the House of Lords on 22 July 2025 whilst debating a Topical Question raised by Lord Empey; ‘To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the “pull factors” attracting migrants to enter the United Kingdom illegally’. [Illegal Migration: Pull Factors. Volume 848: debated on Tuesday 22 July 2025]

On 22 July 2025, I stated that, ‘35,000 failed asylum seekers who came on small boats were removed last year, which is 13% more than in the 12 months previous, when his Government were in charge. There has been a 51% increase in the number of people who have been arrested and prosecuted on illegal working visits.’

The correct information should have been, ‘35,000 people were returned last year, which is 13% more than in the 12 months previous, when his Government were in charge. There has been a 51% increase in the number of people who have been arrested on illegal working visits.’

Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government how many returns of people who arrived by small boat there have been in each month since July 2023, broken down by nationality.

Answered by Lord Hanson of Flint - Minister of State (Home Office)

The Home Office publishes data on returns in the Immigration System Statistics quarterly release. Quarterly data on enforced and voluntary returns of small boat arrivals can be found in Ret_06 of the ‘Returns summary tables’. This dataset covers the period 2018 to March 2025, with data up to June 2025 to be published on 21 August. Additionally, you can find more information on these returns in section 6.1 of the ‘How many people are returned from the UK?’ chapter of the Immigration System Statistics quarterly release.

Enforced and voluntary returns of small boat arrivals by quarter:

Note: This table is a combination of data from Ret_06 and the chart found in section 6.1 of the ‘How many people are returned from the UK?’ chapter of the ‘Immigration System Statistics quarterly release’.

Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure the effective implementation of the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme released on 1 July.

Answered by Lord Hanson of Flint - Minister of State (Home Office)

On 1 July 2025, FIRS was officially launched. To ensure effective implementation, the Home Office has a Case Management Team recruited and trained to administer the scheme, a web portal that is fully operational and detailed published guidance available online. The Government is also continuing to engage with those who may need to register to ensure they understand the requirements during the grace period which ends on 1 October.

There will also be an annual report laid before Parliament on the operation of FIRS. This will include the number of registrations under the scheme, together with the number of people charged and prosecuted for failing to comply with the scheme’s requirements.

Found: 2022– 13 November 2023– 13 November 2023– 5 July 2024 5 July 2024 5 July 2024 5 July 2024 Lord Davies of Gower

Found: November 2023– 5 July 2024Department for Transport Annual Report and Accounts 2024-2025 175 Lord Davies of Gower

Found: 2022– 13 November 2023– 13 November 2023– 5 July 2024 5 July 2024 5 July 2024 5 July 2024 Lord Davies of Gower

Found: October 2022– 5 July 2024 13 November 2023– 5 July 2024 13 November 2023– 5 July 2024 Lord Davies of Gower