Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many people who were returned to Ireland by Immigration Enforcement subsequently returned to the UK (a) once and (b) on multiple occasions in each year since 2020.

As part of the Common Travel Area (CTA) arrangements, the UK does not operate routine immigration controls on journeys from Ireland to the UK, with no immigration checks being undertaken on the Northern Ireland-Ireland land border. The UK does however operate intelligence-led operational activity on CTA routes – away from the land border to detect those who intend to abuse CTA arrangements.

To maintain the highest standards of accuracy, the Home Office prefers to refer to published data, as this has been subject to rigorous quality assurance under National Statistics protocols prior to publication.

Our published data Immigration system statistics quarterly release - GOV.UK includes details on returns to Ireland in table Ret_D02 of the ‘returns detailed datasets’.

Passenger arrivals and detected arrivals via illegal entry routes are also included in the published data Immigration system statistics quarterly release - GOV.UK although the data does not detail arrivals to the UK specifically from Ireland.