asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many Persian nationals have entered the United Kingdom in each of the past five years and for each month in the current year; how many have left the United Kingdom in the same period; how many Persian nationals are currently in the United Kingdom; and how many of these are students at universities and centres of higher education.

The numbers of Iranian nationals who have entered the United Kingdom is published annually in the Command Papers "Control of Immigration Statistics"—table 1 of the issue for 1978, Cmnd. 7565. The latest available monthly figures are given in the following table. For more up to date information on admissions of Iranian nationals at Heathrow airport I refer my hon. Friend to my reply today to a question by my hon. Friend, the Member for Epping Forest (Mr. Biggs-Davison).

IRANIAN NATIONALS ADMITTED TO THE UNITED KINGDOM
				Thousands
			1978	1979
January	…	…	14·2	12·2
February	…	…	7·5	5·7
March	…	…	18·3	5·3
April	…	…	15·3	9·6
May	…	…	11·0	8·5
June	…	…	22·7	13·3
July	…	…	39·9	27·6*
August	…	…	40·3	34·0*
September	…	…	26·8
October	…	…	14·1
November	…	…	10·7
December	…	…	16·3
Year	…	…	237·1
*Provisional.

I am informed by my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science that the number of Iranian students at universities and other maintained educational establishments in the academic year 1977–78 was 4,300. Information about the numbers of Iranian nationals who have left the United Kingdom, and the numbers who are currently in the United Kingdom, is not available.