Home Department written question – answered at on 12 September 2005.
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what estimate he has made of the total number of failed asylum seekers in (a) the UK and (b) each county.
The information requested is not available and could be produced only at disproportionate cost.
The recent National Audit Office report Returning failed asylum applicants" acknowledges that the number of failed asylum seekers in the UK is impossible to determine as some will have left the country of their own accord.
No Government have ever been able to produce an accurate figure for the number of failed asylum seekers who are in the country illegally. By its very nature it is impossible to quantify accurately, and that remains the case. We do not know how many failed asylum seekers remain in the country, because there is no means of counting those who leave the country on their own accord without informing the immigration authorities.
Information on the number of removals of failed asylum seekers is published quarterly and annually, on the Home Office Research Development and Statistics Directorate website at http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/immigration1.html
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