The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond (Yorks) (Mr Hague), last held discussions with his Mauritian counterpart on 23 February 2012 during the Somalia Conference and with the Prime Minister of Mauritius on 17 April 2013.

My hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), then Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Children and Families, visited Mauritius in September 2012 to attend the 18th Conference for Commonwealth Education Ministers Stakeholders Forum. We continue to be represented by a resident high commissioner in Port Louis.

The information requested falls within the responsibility of the UK Statistics Authority. I have asked the authority to reply.

Letter from Glen Watson:

As Director General for the Office for National Statistics (ONS), I have been asked to respond to your Parliamentary Question to the Minister for the Cabinet Office asking how many UK citizens visited Mauritius in each of the last five years [169811].

I am able to report estimated visits to Mauritius made by UK citizens or nationals who are resident in the UK. Estimates are derived from the International Passenger Survey and are provided separately from 2008 to 2012.

Please note that if more than one country was visited during a trip abroad only the main country visited is recorded. This means that if a UK national residing in the UK visited Mauritius and another country in the same visit and Mauritius was stayed in for longest, only Mauritius would be recorded in the estimates.

The IPS is a sample survey and is subject to sampling errors. The 2012 annual 95 per cent confidence interval relating to overseas travel and tourism visits from the UK is approximately +/-13.6 per cent of the estimate for "Other African" countries such as Mauritius.

The information requested falls within the responsibility of the UK Statistics Authority. I have asked the authority to reply.

Letter from Glen Watson, dated October 2013:

As Director General for the Office for National Statistics (ONS) I have been asked to respond to your Parliamentary Question to the Minister for the Cabinet Office asking how many Mauritians are currently resident in the UK [169812].

The Office for National Statistics collects data on residents of the UK from the Annual Population Survey (APS), which is the Labour Force Survey (LFS) plus various sample boosts. It is a household survey and so does not include people living in most types of communal establishment.

The latest estimates that are available are derived from the APS for the 12 month period of January to December 2012. The estimated number of Mauritian born residents in the UK is 46,000 with a corresponding margin of error of +/- 9,000. The estimated number of Mauritian nationals resident in the UK is 19,000 with a corresponding margin of error of +/- 6,000; this estimate is lower because some people born in Mauritius will be, or will have become, UK nationals, or will be nationals of other countries.

The margin of error refers to the 95 per cent confidence interval and is a measure of the uncertainty associated with making inferences from a sample.