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Asylum: Expenditure

Volume 486: debated on Thursday 15 January 2009

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how much was spent on the (a) assisted voluntary returns and (b) enforced returns of unsuccessful asylum seekers in each of the last five years; and how many were returned under each system. (242776)

[holding answer 16 December 2008]: The information is as follows.

Asylum based assisted voluntary returns (AVR)

AVR spend (£)

Number returning under AVR

2003-04

14,787,054.00

2004-05

8,767,885.83

2004—2,705

2005-06

9,450,020.00

2005—3,235

2006-07

14,851,442.42

2006—5,340

2007-08

12,135,665.00

2007—2,865

1 Assisted voluntary returns figures were not published in 2003.

Notes:

1. Financial spend figures for AVR Programme year 2008-09 are not yet available as the programme is still currently operating.

2. Financial spend figures for AVR programme years 2006-07 and 2007-08 are still subject to audit and are therefore subject to change and should be treated as provisional

3. Asylum based returns under assisted voluntary return programmes (run by the International Organization for Migration) may include some cases leaving under the Assisted Voluntary Return for Irregular Migrants Programme and some cases where enforcement action has been initiated.

4. Asylum based AVR returns figures for 2007 should be treated as provisional.

A breakdown of the spend on enforced returns of unsuccessful asylum seekers in each of the last five years is not available. The National Audit Office (NAO) give a breakdown of what it costs to enforce the removal of a failed asylum seeker in Appendix 2 of their Report “Returning Failed Asylum applicants”. In this they estimate the average cost of an enforced removal as being £11,000.

Published statistics on immigration and asylum, including removals, are available from the Library of the House and from the Home Office Research, Development and Statistics Directorate website at:

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/immigration-asylum-stats.html.