Foreign Travel

Philip Davies
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how much was spent on foreign travel by his Department in each of the last eight years.

Mr. Byrne
I am advised that the figures for overseas travel for Home Office civil servants since 1998 are as provided in the following table.

The rise in expenditure reflects increased activity in football disorder spending, increased spending due to world cup preparations and banning order operations (CRCSG); increase in overseas travel of Juxtaposed Controls officers and Air Line Liaison officers (IND).

Juxtaposed Controls were set up as part of the strategy to reduce asylum intake and became fully operational from September 2004. The Controls are based at the Channel Tunnel, the French Seaports of Calais, Dunkerque and Boulogne and the Eurostar terminals at Brussels, Paris, Lille and Frethun. The Juxtaposed Controls counter and deter illegal migration, focusing equally on preventing clandestine illegal entrants and fraudulent use of documents.

Juxtaposed Controls in Calais provide a significant layer of security, increasing pressure on facilitators and racketeers who profit from attempting to smuggle people through to the UK. Facilitators are handed to the French Border Control law Enforcement Agency PAF, and appear in court soon after.

-------------------
|    |Overseas (£)|
-------------------
|1998|885,401     |
-------------------
|1999|1,433,681   |
-------------------
|2000|1,383,602   |
-------------------
|2001|2,070,148   |
-------------------
|2002|2,350,067   |
-------------------
|2003|4,447,233   |
-------------------
|2004|5,845,214   |
-------------------
|2005|7,187,896   |
-------------------