Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether the new community sponsorship scheme will commence before the number of immigrants entering the country illegally has been reduced to zero.

Answered by Jo White - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)

As set out in the Restoring Order and Control statement, arrivals under the new named sponsorship route will be capped. The number of arrivals will be carefully managed to align with the UK’s capacity to support refugees, and the Home Office will retain overall control on numbers.

Refugee status will be determined in partnership with the UNHCR, and all refugees will be subject to appropriate security, identity, and background checks before arrival in the UK.

Safe and legal routes offer an alternative to dangerous journeys for refugees genuinely fleeing war and persecution. The launch of the named sponsorship route will not depend on illegal entry reaching zero.

The government will set out further details on the schemes, including eligibility requirements, in due course.

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what criteria migrants applying under the new community sponsorship scheme will have to meet.

Answered by Jo White - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)

As set out in the Restoring Order and Control statement, arrivals under the new named sponsorship route will be capped. The number of arrivals will be carefully managed to align with the UK’s capacity to support refugees, and the Home Office will retain overall control on numbers.

Refugee status will be determined in partnership with the UNHCR, and all refugees will be subject to appropriate security, identity, and background checks before arrival in the UK.

Safe and legal routes offer an alternative to dangerous journeys for refugees genuinely fleeing war and persecution. The launch of the named sponsorship route will not depend on illegal entry reaching zero.

The government will set out further details on the schemes, including eligibility requirements, in due course.

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether there is a cap on the number of people who can apply under the new community sponsorship scheme announced in June 2026.

Answered by Jo White - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)

As set out in the Restoring Order and Control statement, arrivals under the new named sponsorship route will be capped. The number of arrivals will be carefully managed to align with the UK’s capacity to support refugees, and the Home Office will retain overall control on numbers.

Refugee status will be determined in partnership with the UNHCR, and all refugees will be subject to appropriate security, identity, and background checks before arrival in the UK.

Safe and legal routes offer an alternative to dangerous journeys for refugees genuinely fleeing war and persecution. The launch of the named sponsorship route will not depend on illegal entry reaching zero.

The government will set out further details on the schemes, including eligibility requirements, in due course.

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many foreign national offenders, sentenced to less than a year in prison, were in the community as at June 2026.

Answered by Anna Turley - Minister of State (Home Office)

The number of foreign national offenders (FNOs) sentenced to less than a year in prison and living in the community is not available from published information.

However, the latest published information shows that at the end of Q2 2026 there were 21,294 FNOs subject to deportation living in the community. More information can be found at: Migration transparency data - GOV.UK.

11,733 FNOs have been returned from the UK since the 2024 election (1 July 2024 – 31 July 2026). More information an be found at: Returns from the UK between 1 July 2024 and 31 July 2026 - GOV.UK

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the answer of 8 September 2026, to Question 26942 on Asylum: Sponsorship, when the cap on the new community sponsorship scheme will be announced.

Answered by Anna Turley - Minister of State (Home Office)

The new safe and legal routes announced in the Restoring Order and Control statement will enable community groups, universities and employers to identify refugees they wish to sponsor.

The routes will be capped. Arrivals under the new community sponsorship route will start small and build over time to align with the UK’s capacity to support refugees. The Home Office will retain overall control on numbers. The government will set out further details in due course.

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many foreign national offenders were convicted of any criminal offence but not sentenced to prison, broken down by offence type, in the year ending June 2026.

Answered by Jake Richards - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)

The Ministry of Justice publishes information on convictions and sentencing in the Outcomes by Offence data tool, that can be downloaded from the Criminal Justice Statistics landing page here: Criminal justice statistics quarterly - GOV.UK

However, it is not possible to identify through these statistics whether the offender was a foreign national. This information may be held in court records but to examine individual court records would incur disproportionate costs.

The removal of Foreign National Offenders is a priority for this Government and within its first two years (July 2024 to June 2026), this Government has increased returns of FNOs by 41% compared to the last two years of the previous Government.

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many “Red” days there have been each month since April 2025.

Answered by Anna Turley - Minister of State (Home Office)

The Met Office provides the Home Office with a daily assessment of the likelihood of at least one small boat crossing attempt which translates into Red, Amber and Green days. This assessment takes multiple factors into account - further detail on the methodology can be found in the previous Home Office publication at www.gov.uk/government/statistics/small-boat-arrivals-and-the-impact-of-crossing-conditions/small-boat-arrivals-and-the-impact-of-crossing-conditions.

The Home Office began receiving the Met Office assessment from September 2019, as such some of the data requested is unavailable. Available data on the number of red days is provided below up to 31 August 2026 – while this goes beyond the periods requested, it is provided in one place for completeness. This data shows that there have been more favourable crossing conditions so far this year than the same period in almost any year since 2020. Red days this year have already exceeded the 106 recorded in the whole of 2022, which saw a record 45,000 migrants arrive in small boats.

To provide additional context to the request, the average number of arrivals per red day per year (to date) has also been provided. This demonstrates a notable reduction in the average number of arrivals per red day in 2026 (to 31 August). The average number of migrants arriving on red days between January and August has fallen by 38% from 232 to 144 over the past year. This represents a 43% drop from the peak of 251 in 2022.

Table 1. Number of red days per month – September 2019 to August 2026

Table 2. Average number of small boat arrivals per red day per year to date (1 Jan - 31 Aug)

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many “Red” days there were each month between January 2018 and April 2021.

Answered by Anna Turley - Minister of State (Home Office)

The Met Office provides the Home Office with a daily assessment of the likelihood of at least one small boat crossing attempt which translates into Red, Amber and Green days. This assessment takes multiple factors into account - further detail on the methodology can be found in the previous Home Office publication at www.gov.uk/government/statistics/small-boat-arrivals-and-the-impact-of-crossing-conditions/small-boat-arrivals-and-the-impact-of-crossing-conditions.

The Home Office began receiving the Met Office assessment from September 2019, as such some of the data requested is unavailable. Available data on the number of red days is provided below up to 31 August 2026 – while this goes beyond the periods requested, it is provided in one place for completeness. This data shows that there have been more favourable crossing conditions so far this year than the same period in almost any year since 2020. Red days this year have already exceeded the 106 recorded in the whole of 2022, which saw a record 45,000 migrants arrive in small boats.

To provide additional context to the request, the average number of arrivals per red day per year (to date) has also been provided. This demonstrates a notable reduction in the average number of arrivals per red day in 2026 (to 31 August). The average number of migrants arriving on red days between January and August has fallen by 38% from 232 to 144 over the past year. This represents a 43% drop from the peak of 251 in 2022.

Table 1. Number of red days per month – September 2019 to August 2026

Table 2. Average number of small boat arrivals per red day per year to date (1 Jan - 31 Aug)