Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether her Department records the number of repeat offenders within the asylum seeker population.

The information you have requested is not available from published statistics.

The UK will always offer protection to those in genuine need, but we will not allow our asylum system to be exploited by those who commit crimes or endanger our communities.

Any Foreign National who is convicted of a crime, including those seeking asylum, are referred to the Home Office for deportation immediately following sentencing and will be excluded from protection under the Refugee Convention if they have committed a ‘particularly serious crime’ as defined in Section 72 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002.

The government has also toughened the definition of a ‘particularly serious crime’ to include all sexual offence convictions that trigger notification requirements through another BSAI Bill amendment announced earlier this year. For the first time, foreign nationals on the sex offenders’ register will be automatically denied refugee status.

In the first year of this government over 35,000 individuals with no right to be here, including failed asylum seekers and foreign national offenders, have already been returned - a 13% increase compared to the same period 12 months prior.