Immigration

House of Lords written question – answered at on 23 September 2013.

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Photo of Lord Boateng Lord Boateng Labour

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many civil servants or other employees of the immigration authorities have been deployed in each of the past five years in securing the voluntary or involuntary return of illegal immigrants; and what plans they have to increase that number.

Photo of Lord Taylor of Holbeach Lord Taylor of Holbeach The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department

It is not possible to break down the Immigration Enforcement Directorate's workforce as requested. Furthermore, this work was previously undertaken by the UK Border Agency until 31st March 2013 and many staff in the Home Office and wider Government contribute to this work.

It is not possible to differentiate between staff involved in voluntary or involuntary returns because individuals can opt to return voluntarily at any point in the process and officials work across both types of removal.

However as at 30th June 2013 the Immigration Enforcement Directorate had a total of 4,150 paid Full Time Equivalent (FTE) staff.

The Immigration Enforcement Directorate is currently recruiting frontline posts to secure the removal of immigration offenders. This includes the recruitment of additional enforcement officers who will receive arrest training. Over the course of the year Immigration Enforcement will have recruited over 400 new Arrest Trained officers and converted 150 posts from non-arrest trained to Arrest Trained posts, doubling the arrest capacity available.

Notes: Full Time Equivalent means that part timers are counted by the proportion of full time hours they work, so that a part timer working half the time of an equivalent full timer would count as 0.5 FTE.

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