Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people smugglers have been sentenced in relation to irregular migration across the English Channel since 2018.

The Ministry of Justice publishes data on offenders sentenced for irregular migration offences at criminal courts in England and Wales in the Outcomes by Offences data tool, that can be downloaded from the Criminal Justice Statistics landing page here: Criminal Justice Statistics Quarterly: June 2024.

However, data held centrally does not include information on whether offenders were people smugglers involved in irregular migration specifically across the English Channel. This information may be held in court records but to examine individual court records would be of disproportionate costs.