Defence secretary latest Labour MP to misrepresent government’s record on immigration returns

Defence secretary John Healey is the latest Labour MP to incorrectly refer to the total number of immigration returns carried out under the government as ‘deportations’.

On Thursday 8 May, on Times Radio Breakfast [01:12:30], Mr Healey said: “24,000 people have been deported because they have no right to stay in Britain.” The claim was picked up by Full Fact’s AI tools.

But as we explained in a fact check last month, the 24,000 figure refers to the total number of immigration returns carried out between 5 July 2024 and 22 March 2025. Not all of these returns meet the official definition of a ‘deportation’—in fact, the majority involved people who left the UK voluntarily. We don’t know exactly how many of the 24,000 returns were officially classed as deportations.

We’ve contacted Mr Healey to ask him to correct the error, and will update this blog post if we receive a response.

Last week, we wrote about a similar claim made by Labour MP and Cabinet Office parliamentary private secretary Josh MacAlister, who corrected his claim on Facebook after Full Fact got in touch.