§ Mr. GodsiffTo ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs how many nationals of each country from which a visa is required applied for entry clearance to come to the United Kingdom for temporary purposes, including visitor and student applications in 2002; how many visas were issued for temporary purposes; how many recipients of these visas returned to their country of nationality before the visas expired; and how many applied(a) to remain permanently in the United Kingdom and (b) for political asylum. [162160]
§ Mr. BrowneI have been asked to reply.
The available information is given in the tables, which will be available in the Library.
Entry clearance data are available by country of application, which is not necessarily the country of the applicant's nationality.
The information on grants of settlement includes persons who entered the United Kingdom with an entry clearance leading to settlement, as well as some asylum seekers granted leave to remain in 2002 and in previous years; and the data on asylum applications is likely to include some persons who held no entry clearance.
No data are available on the number of persons who return to their country of nationality before their leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom expires, or on the number of holders of visas for temporary purposes who apply for asylum or for settlement.
Information on entry clearance, settlement and asylum applications are published in the quarterly asylum statistics and the annual Command Paper Control of Immigration Statistics 2002. Copies are available from the Library and from the Home Office Research Development and Statistics Directorate web site at: http:// www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/immigrationl.html