Downing Street Says » Foreign Prisoners

Asked for the Prime Minister’s explanation of the state of play with foreign prisoners, and what was the Government doing to get rid them, the PMS replied that the Prime Minister’s general position on this was that two years ago 1,500 prisoners were deported, last year 2,500 prisoners were deported, this year so far we had deported over 3,000, and we were on track to meet the commitment to deport 4,000 foreign prisoners. This would be the largest number of foreign prisoners ever deported in any one year. We had speeded up our systems including by having dedicated prisons where we could concentrate immigration officers who work on deportation. We had signed an EU prisoner transfer agreement, which meant that prisoners would increasingly serve their sentences in their own countries. And we were also implementing country specific action plans with the countries that had the largest number of prisoners here. So we were increasing the number of foreign prisoners being deported, and we were taking action in order to facilitate that.

Asked if we had deals yet with Jamaica and Nigeria, or were negotiations still ongoing, the PMS replied that negotiations were on going. For example in the past couple of weeks a high level delegation had been sent to Jamaica to push for progress with the Jamaican Government. No doubt the Prime Minister would also want to raise this personally with the Jamaican Prime Minister when they meet in the margins of the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting next month. We were making progress. We had agreements with over 100 countries, there was clearly more we need to do in order to reach agreements with other countries, but we were progressing.

Asked how many foreign prisoners remained in prisons waiting to be deported, the PMS replied that the Home Office could give the exact figures on this. As was well known, there were 11,000 prisoners in foreign jails; we were significantly increasing the rate at which prisoners were being deported from 1,500 two years ago to 2,500 last year, and to 4,000 this year.

Put that the Prime Minister had said in his Conference speech that in future very serious foreign criminals would be automatically deported, and asked how this was developing, the PMS replied that this was being taken forward in relation to non-EU citizens. The Borders Bill included provisions that meant we would be able to deport non-EU nationals automatically if they had been convicted of a crime carrying a sentence of over one year, or if they had been convicted of any of the long list of crimes specified in the Bill which included both drug and gun crimes. For EU citizens we currently consider deportation for anyone sentenced to more than 2 years, we were now saying that we would also consider people convicted of specific offences including drug and gun crimes. And for newcomers it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to argue the right of family life defence, which was the defence used in the Chindamo case. So for non-EU nationals we were legislating in order to make this happen, and for EU nationals we were saying for anyone convicted of a sentence of more than two years, or for those convicted of specific offences including drug and gun crime, we would consider them for automatic deportation. And if they fought this, we believe it will be very difficult for them to use the right of family life defence because by definition they are newcomers into the country.

Put that surely the EU prevented us from "kicking out" fellow citizens of the EU, the PMS replied that it did not, only if they could use the right of family life defence. But if they were newcomers then it would be difficult to see how they could use that defence.

Asked was it not the case that we could not send back many non-EU citizens because of Human Rights issues, the PMS replied that they would be considered for deportation, and obviously we were looking to reach agreement with as many countries as we can in order to deport foreign citizens. For example in relation to the risk of them being subject to torture if they went back, we had recently reached agreement with Jordan, Lebanon, and Libya among other countries.

Asked on EU nationals, if they were newcomers and even if they were deported, could they not just come straight back, the PMS replied that because they were being deported, they would then serve their sentence overseas. In terms of what the Prime Minister specifically said in his Conference speech, for EU nationals, if they commit a crime, they get deported.

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» Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Foreign Prisoners

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