Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how her Department plans to return Albanian migrants who are in the UK illegally when the movements of those migrants are not limited or tracked while in the UK.

We continue to work extremely closely with our Albanian partners on a range of issues and are committed to building on our co-operation to date, including on tackling illegal migration. That includes the excellent operational collaboration with Albanian law enforcement, and our readmissions agreement signed last year. Since it was signed, we have seen over 1,000 Albanian foreign national offenders and immigration offenders removed from the UK, including some who crossed the channel illegally to come to the UK.

The UK and Albania pledged to fast track the removal of Albanians with no right to be in the UK wherever possible, and to send senior Albanian law enforcement to the UK to speed up processing and share information with our authorities. In co-operation with the Government of Albania, we are taking every opportunity to intercept the activities of organised criminal gangs and people smugglers, and speed up the removal of Albanians and other nationals with no right to be in the UK.

We do face complex challenges to our efforts to facilitate the entirely legitimate and legal return of people in the UK, such as travel documentation, late appeals and other legal challenges aimed at frustrating removals. Most individuals are managed outside of detention using a variety of contact methods, including frequent reporting, and tagging as a condition of immigration bail whilst these challenges are resolved, however detention can, and will also be used, where appropriate. We are looking to address some of these challenges through our Sovereign Borders plan, which aims to remove more easily those with no right to be in the UK.