Immigration returns haven’t ‘fallen through the floor’ recently

Talking about the “people that don’t have a right to be here” on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg [29:30] yesterday, Labour’s shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson said: “Returns have fallen through the floor.”

We’ve asked Ms Phillipson what she meant by this, because the actual number of returns—whether voluntary or enforced—has risen recently, albeit to a level that remains lower than it was in the early 2010s.  

As this chart shows, both voluntary and enforced returns have broadly risen since their lowest point around the first year of the pandemic.

These returns cover many different categories of people, most of whom were not seeking asylum.

It’s important to remember that the changing number of people returned doesn’t necessarily show us the proportion of people ineligible to be here who were removed. Nor does it tell us how many people were being deterred or prevented from illegally entering or remaining in the UK.