Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many times employers have used his Department's employer checking service to check an employee’s or potential employee’s immigration status in each year since that service was introduced.

The Employer Checking Service has received and processed the following right to work checks from employers since April 2012.

2012/13: 55, 978

2013/14: 54, 701

2014/15: 68, 165

2015/16: 68, 409

2016/17: 94, 247

2017/18: 95, 554

April to December 2018: 43,825

This information is provisional internal management information and subject to change. The Employer Checking Service has been in place since 2008. Prior to 2012, local records and information were held on the checks processed and not recorded on a central system.

In relation to how much funding the government has spent on promoting awareness of the Employer Checking Service, the information requested is not available in the format requested and could only be obtained at a disproportionate cost.