§ Baroness Anelay of St Johnsasked Her Majesty's Government:
Further to the Written Answer by Lord Filkin on 5 February (WA 36) that 77 per cent of the 80,315 applicants for asylum in 2000 and 68 per cent of 71,365 applicants for asylum in 2001 were refused asylum and exceptional leave to remain, how many of those applicants had been removed from the United Kingdom by 31 January. [HL1570]
§ Lord FilkinInformation on the number of persons who were removed after unsuccessfully seeking asylum in 2000 and 2001 is not available except by examination of individual casefiles. This could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.
The number of asylum applicants removed from 2000 to September 2002 is given in the table.
2000 2001 January to September 2002 (p) Principal Applicants1 8,980 9,285 7,780 Dependants2 n/a 1,4952 1,825 (p) Provisional data subject to change. Figures are rounded the nearest five. 1 Includes persons departing "voluntarily" after enforcement action has been initiated against them and persons leaving under the assisted voluntary return programmes run by the IOM. 2 Data for dependants removed show only those removed from April 2001 onwards. Data on dependants were not collected prior to this date. Data on the number of asylum applicants removed in the final quarter of 2002 are due to be published at the end of February on the Home Office web-site: www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/whatsnew1.html.