Home Office in the dark about the number of illegal immigrants arriving each year

THE Home Office is struggling to “get a grip” on the number of migrants entering the UK illegally every year, the immigration watchdog has said.

David Bolt, chief inspector of borders and immigration, told MPS there should be an official estimate for the figure but said it was “extremely difficult” to be precise about how many overseas nationals were in Britain unlawfully. Earlier this year, a former immigration chief claimed the figure was likely to run to more than a million.

The Home Office insists there are no official estimates of the number of illegal immigrants living in the UK.

Asked about the one million figure as he appeared before the Commons home affairs committee, he said: “I have no basis on which to reach a number … I would have to rely on the Home Office to give me a number.”.

He told the committee the Home Office should be able to get “very close” to an understanding of the difference between numbers of migrants known to have arrived and left.

He continued: “Then there are those that arrive clandestinely, of which they have no knowledge unless there’s some encounter with those individuals. Obviously that number is much harder to get a grip on.

“Yes, I think there ought to be a better idea, an estimate if you like, of what that number is, the Home Office should have some better estimate, but it would be extremely difficult to be precise.”

Mr Bolt’s comments came after a border workers’ union boss claimed illegal immigrants in Britain could “survive very well” and had very little chance of being caught.

Lucy Moreton, general secretary of the Immigration Service Union, told The Sun: “If you are here illegally, you can survive very well, you access medical services, your child can go to school, the chances of us catching you are very, very slim.”

Official statisticians have said it is impossible to quantify accurately the number of people in the UK unlawfully. Twelve years ago, a Home Office assessment put the number of unauthorised migrants in the UK in 2001 at 430,000 – while a report published this year by the think tank Civitas suggested illegal immigration was running at a minimum of 150,000 a year.