Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government what methodology they used to calculate the number of migrants reaching the UK by boat from France in the last three months; and what was the total number of migrants calculated to have reached the UK by boat from France in the last three months, including a breakdown of (1) the estimated number of those of Albanian origin, and (2) the number of those of Albanian origin who are single men; and the speed at which the process of identifying country of origin is now being completed.

The Home Office publishes data on detected small boat arrivals to the UK on gov.uk in the quarterly Irregular Migration to the UK release – the latest data are published includes information on nationality, age and gender and goes up to the end June 2022.

Information about the calculation methodology is given in the ‘About the statistics’ section of the release.

With respect to the speed of identifying country of origin, in most cases, an individual arriving by small boat has this information recorded within 24 hours. Where this is not the case, it is likely due to a false claim being made, or the subject refusing to answer the question.