Lord Green of Deddington – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Green of Deddington on 2016-04-11.
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many illegal entrants were detected (1) on arrival at a UK ferry port, and (2) subsequent to having entered in a vehicle that had arrived at a UK ferry port, in each of the last three years for which figures are available.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
Our records currently indicate that the number of clandestine entrants detected at UK ferry ports was:
2013 756
2014 1,480
2015 1,305
As part of recent changes to the way data is recorded, management information from April 2011 has been refreshed and may differ from the data released in earlier responses.
Previous figures provided for PQ 21106 showed that, at that time, our records indicated that 678 detections had been made at seaports in 2013. Under the new improved recording and reporting system, this figure has been updated to 756.
Clandestine entrants detected in-country with a declared port of departure that is a ferry port:
2013 676
2014 1,343
2015 1,630
This is provisional management information that is subject to change. It has not been assured to the standard of Official Statistics. Because the source of this data is a live operational system, operational reports taking data from the system at different times will continue to reflect slightly different numbers.
As part of recent changes to the way data is recorded, management information from April 2011 has been refreshed and may differ from the data released in earlier responses.
Immigration controls operate at Calais, and as such detections at Dover are normally counted as in country. For the purposes of this question, detections at Dover are counted as "at a UK ferry port".
For part (2), data on the ferry port of departure has been used as a proxy for port of arrival, as the latter is not recorded.
Regarding part (2), it must be noted that data for port of departure is incomplete: over the three year period there are more than 15,000 clandestines detected in country with no port of departure recorded. The data for part (2) excludes clandestine entrants whose declared port of departure is Coquelles, as this is a rail port.
