Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent representations she has received about the number of illegal immigrants entering the UK.

The Home Office regularly receives written questions and correspondence from Honourable Members and their constituents about this issue. Since 2010, we have clamped down on illegal immigration.

The Immigration Act 2014 is a landmark piece of legislation which builds on the Government’s ongoing reforms to our immigration system to ensure it works in our national interest.

The Act will have a major impact on the Home Office’s work to secure our borders, enforce our immigration laws and continue to attract the brightest and the best to the UK.

The Act puts the law firmly on the side of those who respect it, not those who break it.

Key measures from the Act which are now in force including the introduction of enhanced duties for registrars to report suspected sham marriages and civil partnerships; new powers to streamline the recovery of illegal working penalties; the ability to remove harmfulindividuals before their appeals are heard if there is no risk of serious irreversible harm.

The Act also Strengthens requirements for the courts to have regard to Parliament’s view of the public interest in immigration cases raising Article 8-making clear the right to a family life is not to be regarded as absolute and unqualified.

New powers to revoke the driving licences of known illegal immigrants are also included in the Act.