§ Mr. McCrindleTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will estimate the numbers of bogus refugees coming into Britain over each of the past nine years and the current figure for 1988; and if he will make a statement.
§ Mr. RentonInformation on applications for refugee status is published in an annual series of statistical574W bulletins, most recently "Refugee statistics, United Kingdom, 1987" Home Office statistical bulletin 16/88. The statistics show a marked decline over the last nine years in the number of grants of refugee status as a proportion of applications received. But we do not categorise "bogus" applications separately. The refusal of an application means that the asylum-seeker is not considered to have a well-founded fear of persecution; it does not necessarily suggest that the application was not made in good faith.