asked Her Majesty's Government:

What is the number of people who have overstayed their legal temporary residency in the United Kingdom; and how many such individuals have been detected in each of the last 12 months. [HL296]

As the then Home Secretary set out in his evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee on 23 May 2006, following the dismantling of routine embarkation controls beginning in 1994, no Government have been able to produce an accurate figure for the number of people who are in the country illegally, and that remains the case.

A clear goal has been set to reintroduce systems to count everyone in and out of United Kingdom (UK). The e-Borders programme, scheduled to commence in 2008, will strengthen and modernise our border control including providing an electronic record of all those entering and leaving the UK.

In the mean time, targeted embarkation controls continue to take place at major ports to identify failed asylum seekers and other immigration offenders who are leaving the UK, and the Border and Immigration Agency is reviewing its capacity to extend these.

The total number of individuals arrested on enforcement visits between December 2006 and November 2007 is 10,662. It is difficult to ascertain exactly how many of those arrested overstayed their temporary residence, without looking at their case files. However, a proportion of these individuals will have overstayed their leave. The monthly breakdown of this figure is attached at Annexe A. These data are based on management information and are not a national statistic. They should be treated as provisional as they are subject to change.