Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how much funding his Department has provided for the operation of voluntary return schemes for illegal migrants in the 2023-24 financial year.

The Home Office will always look to support those who wish to depart the United Kingdom voluntarily, and the extent of that support is based on a case-by-case assessment of an individual’s needs. General eligibility criteria can be found online at: Get help to return home if you’re a migrant in the UK: Who can get help - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).

The Home Office publishes statistics on all types of removals from the UK, which include voluntary departures. The latest statistics are available at Immigration system statistics quarterly release - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk). Published datasets for voluntary returns are available at: Returns and detention datasets - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).

The cost of a voluntary return depends on the individual circumstances of the case, and therefore we are not able to provide a definitive figure.