To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what estimate she has made of the (a) number of illegal migrants who have entered the UK by crossing the English Channel and (b) proportion of such migrants that have been returned to France in the last 12 months.
Answered on
23 January 2020
Information regarding migrants crossing the English Channel was provided to the Home Affairs Select Committee on 5 March 2019 which gave the number of migrants detected entering the UK by small boats from January 2018 to February 2019 as 428.
On 22 July 2019 the then Home Secretary Sajid Javid provided an additional figure to Home Affairs Select Committee that up to 21 July 2019 725 migrants had crossed the English Channel.
Over 125 people who arrived on small boats have been returned to Europe.