Paul Blomfield – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Paul Blomfield on 2016-05-18.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether data gathered from border exit checks will enable her Department to distinguish between short and longer-term overstaying of visas.

James Brokenshire

Exit checks were introduced in April 2015. They will, over a period of time, provide us with a range of insights into the behaviours of migrants and how they comply with restrictions placed upon their length of stay in the UK.

Data collected from exit checks is a record of cross border movement. It may in the future help inform but will not in itself answer questions on emigration.

The Home Office has announced that it is considering the use of exit checks data for statistical reporting and intends to publish an initial evaluation of the use of exit checks for this purpose. The evaluation will be a technical assessment of the analysis carried out thus far and of the further analysis necessary to better understand short, medium, and long term opportunities.

The initial evaluation of the use of exit checks will be published on 25 August to coincide with the next quarterly immigration statistics release.

Publication of the initial evaluation on the use of exit checks will be on the GOV.UK website