Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to counter the weaponisation of illegal migration networks by hostile states.

As a matter of longstanding policy the Government does not routinely comment on operational matters.

Questions about operational issues regarding hostile states are amongst the most sensitive national security issues that the Government manages and there are obvious limits to what can be said.

Regardless of likelihood, any possibility that a hostile state could seek to exploit illegal migration networks is taken extremely seriously and kept under continuous assessment by officials and our security partners.

That is why we are treating border security as national security, combining rigorous identity and biometric checks, with investigation and law-enforcement action wherever concerns emerge.