Full Fact calls out Wes Streeting claims on Immigration returns.

On Sky News earlier this month, Health secretary Wes Streeting claimed that

“We’ve seen record levels of returns of people who have no legal right to be here, record levels of deportations, thanks to this home secretary.”

This is a false claim and has been debunked by the Full-Fact organisation, whose report can be read at

Immigration returns aren’t at ‘record levels’ under Labour – Full Fact

Their Fact Check gave the following verdict on the Health Secretary's allegations:

“This is not correct, based on official returns data. Neither the overall number of immigration returns nor the number of enforced returns carried out during Labour’s first year in office is a record for a 12-month period.”

 

Wes Streeting's claims are not even supported by the Labour government's own figures.

During Labour’s first year in office (between 5 July 2024 and 4 July 2025) a total of 35,052 returns of people with no legal right to be in the UK took place.

Because this figure was published on an ad-hoc basis the data cannot be directly compared with the same exact period in previous years, but official immigration statistics show that this figure is not a record for the number of immigration returns for a 12-month period, going back to 2004 when this data series began.

Between 2008 and 2017 total returns over a 12-month period were consistently above 35,000, peaking at around 47,000 in 2012.

For a more direct comparison, we can use official figures for the year ending June, which most closely overlaps with Labour’s first year in office.

These figures show that the 35,833 returns in the year ending June 2025 was more than 12,000 below the figure for 2012, so it clearly not not a “record”.

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