Overview

• Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said the UK will consider cutting or suspending visas for countries that refuse or delay taking back nationals with no right to remain, following a Five Eyes statement on faster returns.
• Government sources describe an escalating toolkit from visa quotas to outright bans, enabled by powers in the 2022 Nationality and Borders Act that no government has yet used.
• India, Pakistan and Nigeria were cited among resistant partners, with India the largest source of overstayers and officials complaining of slow emergency travel documents despite a 2021 returns deal and 7,395 Indian repatriations last year.
• Data points cited by officials include 20,706 Indian overstayers in the year to 2020, 1,194 Indians crossing the Channel in 2023, and 311 Indians deported between 2020 and 2024.
• The joint principles also target online facilitation of irregular migration, with UK agencies reporting more than 23,000 takedowns of posts or accounts since 2021, including over 8,000 in the past year.