Written question asked by Lord Hylton (Crossbench), in the House of Lords. It was answered by Lord West of Spithead (Labour) on Monday, 17 March 2008.

Immigration: Overstayers

Question: asked Her Majesty's Government:How many visitors and students are overstaying their leave to enter; and what proportion of them have acquired national insurance numbers.

Answer: Exit controls were phased out from 1994 and as such no Government have ever been able to produce an accurate figure for the number of people who remain in the country illegally. By its very nature it is impossible to quantify accurately and that remains the case. Consequently it is not possible to determine what percentage of overstayers has acquired national insurance numbers. As part of the Government's 10-point plan for delivery, by Christmas 2008 the majority of foreign nationals will be counted in and out of the country. This will build on the successes of our early testing of the e-Borders programme (Project Semaphore) which already covers over 30 million passenger movements and has led to 18,000 alerts and more than 1,500 arrests. This is part of a sweeping programme of border protection which also includes the global rollout of fingerprint visas, compulsory watch-list checks for all travellers from high-risk countries before they land in Britain and ID cards for foreign nationals.

Secondary information