Justice

Custodial Sentences: Non-UK Citizens

Foreign national offenders convicted in this country should serve their terms of imprisonment at the expense of their own Governments in their own countries. We may have 110 prisoner transfer agreements, but only about three are compulsory. Now that we have rediscovered our mojo for tough international renegotiation, can we please have more compulsory prisoner transfer agreements with high-volume crime countries with lots of nationals in our prisons, such as Pakistan, Nigeria and Albania?

My hon. Friend is right to highlight the importance of removing foreign offenders to serve sentences in their own countries, and we have removed 51,000 such offenders from our prisons since 2010. He is right to highlight that we have a number of nationalities within our prisons, including a high number of Albanian, Polish and Romanian prisoners. We are considering all these matters in some detail.

An error has been identified in the response I gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone).

The correct response should have been:

My hon. Friend is right to highlight the importance of removing foreign offenders to serve sentences in their own countries, and we have removed 51,000 such offenders from our prisons, immigration removal centres and the community since 2010. He is right to highlight that we have a number of nationalities within our prisons, including a high number of Albanian, Polish and Romanian prisoners. We are considering all these matters in some detail.