Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent estimate she has made of the number of people in the UK that have overstayed their visas; if she will make an estimate of the percentage of people in the UK that have overstayed their visas that have been (a) located and (b) deported in the last year; and what further steps she plans to take to (i) track and (ii) enforce compliance among visa holders.

As set out in legislation, an individual is liable to removal from the UK if "the person requires leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom but does not have it". The Home Office does not routinely categorise immigration offenders by the manner in which they became irregular, and to do so could only be achieved at disproportionate cost.

We have already begun delivering a major surge in immigration enforcement and returns activity to remove people with no right to be in the UK and ensure the rules are respected and enforced, with 9,400 people returned from 5 July to 28 October 2024.

Further data on returns activity is published quarterly and can be found on gov.uk at Immigration system statistics quarterly release - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).