Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent estimate she has made of how many cases met the criteria for inclusion in the migration refusal pool before 2008; and if she will make a statement.

This Government inherited over 223,000 records - dating from before December 2008 - with very poor data quality, and no structured plan. Alongside wider work to restore control to our immigration system, particularly through abolishing the UK Border Agency, the Government initiated a programme to bring sense to this stock of old records. Having identified and taken out records relating to those people known to have left the country, as well as duplicate and erroneous records, the number of meaningful pre-2008 records is just over 89,000. Those are now being addressed in the proper way.