Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to her oral statement of 19 April 2022, Official Report, col 25, what the evidential basis is for the UK having welcomed (a) 185,000 people through safe and legal routes, including from Syria, Hong Kong, Afghanistan and Ukraine and (b) 40,000 people in recent years through refugee family reunion routes.

The Home Office publishes data on immigration in the ‘Immigration Statistics Quarterly Release’. As part of that release, data up to December 2021 is available on the following areas:

• Data on those fleeing the Syrian conflict who were resettled under the Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme are published in table Asy_D02 of the ‘asylum and resettlement detailed datasets’.
• Data on BN(O) visas granted (to individuals who hold a BN(O) passport and are, or have recently been, resident in Hong Kong, and their dependants) are published in the chapter ‘How many people come to the UK each year (including visitors)?’.
• Data on refugee family reunion visas granted are published in table Fam_D01 of the ‘asylum and resettlement detailed datasets’.

In addition, data on visas issued under the Ukraine Family Scheme and Ukraine Sponsorship scheme are published weekly on gov.uk: Ukraine Family Scheme and Ukraine Sponsorship Scheme (Homes for Ukraine) Visa Data - GOV.UK

In the Afghanistan resettlement and immigration policy statement, the Home Office reported that around 15,000 people had been evacuated from Afghanistan through Operation Pitting. In the six months since Operation Pitting, a further 3,000 have been helped to enter the UK.