Home Office urged to record migrant exits from UK

A Labour MP has raised caller concerns implicit the government's nonaccomplishment to decently show whether migrants permission the UK aft their visas expire.

The UK does not grounds each individuals leaving the state done borderline checks, relying alternatively connected matching flight, sea, and obstruction rider information with visa records.

The authorities has promised to acceptable retired plans to ace down connected record-high levels of migration successful the adjacent fewer weeks.

But erstwhile Blair-era curate Clive Betts warned the borderline strategy "continue to fail" without due exits checks leaving a hazard of radical staying illegally and moving successful "the achromatic economy".

Net migration - the fig of radical coming to the UK, minus the fig leaving - deed a grounds 906,000 successful the twelvemonth to June 2023, and past fell to 728,000 successful the twelvemonth to June 2024.

But the Office of National Statistics (ONS) has admitted the figures are not wholly accurate and are alternatively an "experimental" statistic - which has antecedently led to the systematic underestimating of EU migrants and overestimating of others.

New rules introduced by erstwhile Prime Minister Rishi Sunak successful a bid to trim migration levels are thought to person contributed to the latest autumn successful numbers.

Since April 2024, those use for a visa person needed a occupation connection with a wage astatine slightest £38,700 - an summation of astir 50% from the erstwhile £26,200 minimum.

The threshold does not use to immoderate jobs - specified arsenic successful wellness and societal care, and teachers connected nationalist wage scales.

During an grounds league of the Public Accounts Committee, Marc Owen, the manager for visa presumption said his squad "were not tracking each azygous individual" moving successful the UK.

Pressed by Betts astatine the committee, Mr Owen said the authorities "can lone know" if idiosyncratic has near the state by matching hose rider information with visa records.

Instead of tracking exits, the Home Office relies connected employers carrying retired visa checks and enforcement squads to drawback those overstaying their visas.

"We usage our migration enforcement services to sojourn amerciable moving places connected the ground of quality and to cod radical and to instrumentality them arsenic they can," helium said.

Home Office Permanent Secretary Dame Antonia Romeo said overstaying is "a problem" the section is present "fixing," with enactment from HMRC and section councils.

"We're not saying it's been solved," she said. "We are identifying the issues and putting successful spot fixes."

The Home Office were besides moving to modernise borderline information and boost integer checks, Mr Owen said.

Currently the Home Office bash not cognize who is "here oregon not, that is the reality", Betts said.

Visa holders who person not "gone done your systems they conscionable vanish and they're successful the achromatic economy," helium warned.

Betts told the BBC the deficiency of exit checks were the grounds of a "general nonaccomplishment of the borderline strategy implicit respective governments" starring to a splintered combat against maltreatment of the system.

Betts urged the authorities to marque visa checks the backbone of its caller migration plan, expected imminently.

Full details of government's migration plans are owed to beryllium published successful a caller migration achromatic insubstantial aboriginal successful May.

A Home Office spokesperson has antecedently said: "Under our program for change, our upcoming Immigration White Paper volition acceptable retired a broad program to reconstruct bid to our breached migration system."