Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many people arrived in the UK by small boats across the Channel in each month since January 2019; and how many and what proportion of those people subsequently applied for asylum.

The Home Office publishes data on small boat arrivals and subsequent asylum claims in the Irregular Migration to the UK quarterly report. Data on small boat arrivals by month are published in table Irr_02a of the Irregular migration to the UK data tables. Data on asylum claims from arrivals are published in section 4 of the most recent Irregular migration to the UK release. The latest data go up to the end of June 2022.

Statistics on small boats include individuals who were detected on arrival to the UK, detected in the Channel and subsequently brought to the UK, and those encountered in the UK who were suspected of having arrived on a small boat. They do not include any persons who arrived on larger vessels (such as on a ferry), those prevented from departing France or intercepted by French authorities and returned to France, or those who arrived in the UK undetected.