Second Labour MP corrects social media claim about number of migrants ‘deported’

Labour MP for Hemel Hempstead, David Taylor, has corrected a claim he made on Facebook about the number of individuals “deported” under Labour, after being contacted by Full Fact.

The post, shared on 11 May, claimed: “We’ve already deported 24,000+ individuals with no right to be here.” This claim was detected by Full Fact’s AI tools.

However, as we explained last month, this figure refers to the total number of immigration returns that took place between 5 July 2024, when Labour formed a government, and 22 March 2025, not all of which were officially classed as ‘deportations’. The majority involved people who left the UK voluntarily, and we don’t know exactly how many of the 24,000 returns were in fact deportations.

We’ve seen this claim made by Labour politicians a few times lately. Last week, the defence secretary John Healey made the same claim on Times Radio Breakfast, and before that Josh MacAlister MP corrected a Facebook post that also referred to 24,000 people having been “deported”, after Full Fact got in touch.

On 14 May, Mr Taylor’s Facebook post was edited to say: “We’ve already removed 24,000+ individuals with no right to be here.” We’re grateful to Mr Taylor for promptly correcting his post after we got in touch.