Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what estimate he has made of the number of people living illegally in the UK in each of the last five years.

Any estimate of the exact size of the illegal population is extremely difficult and there would be considerable uncertainty around it.

Exit checks were introduced in April 2015 and are, over time, providing more detailed insights into the behaviour of migrants and how they comply with the restrictions placed upon their length of stay in the UK. Instead of producing inaccurate numbers, the Government is focused on making it harder for people to live in the UK illegally.