Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what estimate her Department has made of the proportion of visa holders whose whereabouts are easily identifiable.

No estimate of the proportion of visa holders whose whereabouts are easily identifiable is held.

All sponsors of migrants coming to the UK in order to work and study are required as part of their licensing arrangements to report to the Home Office on changes of circumstances of the migrants they are sponsoring.

The Home Office remains committed to making improvements where they can be achieved within existing resources. This includes a programme of continuous improvement in data management and caseworking platforms as part of the Home Office’s delivery of its digital immigration system. The introduction of eVisas and Electronic Travel Authorisations (ETAs) means the Home Office knows more about everyone coming to the UK, improving data quality and enabling upstream interventions. As the Home Office moves to a fully digital system, eVisas will increasingly update in real time when status changes, automatically revoking access to work, benefits, housing, and services, unlike physical documents that can be misused after expiry. Immigration status information is available automatically through system-to-system checks with public authorities and government departments.

Alongside this, the Home Office is developing a new digital capability, to be implemented in 2026, to help determine whether individuals have complied, or are complying, with conditions on the time they may stay in the UK. This will also make it easier to share travel and immigration compliance data with caseworkers and downstream services for a variety of analytical and operational needs.