Foreign National Offenders

Baroness Smith of Basildon Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for repeating the Answer. The principle of deporting foreign criminals is one on which we all agree, but the Government need to take responsibility for the mistakes and failures of the system happening now. When the PM said that deporting foreign criminals was a major priority he did not add, “But only in five years’ time after new legislation”. Today we are deporting fewer foreign criminals than in 2010—and more criminals are absconding and the Government have no idea where they are.

The National Audit Office has identified that a third of the failures are due to basic bureaucratic mistakes in the Home Office. In 38% of cases, the forms were not even filled in correctly, and in a number of cases no one bothered to book the flights home. It is clear that we need less rhetoric, greater competence and better management. Given the necessity of European and international co-operation to deal with this problem, what impact does the Minister consider that the Government’s obsession with opting out of EU criminal justice measures has had on tackling it?

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[Lord Bates]

We will certainly make investigations into that and get the information required, and do as the noble Baroness suggests.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister, who has been very helpful in his answers. But the point that I made in my original question, and was made by the noble Lord, Lord Richard, was about the Schengen information system that the Minister himself referred to as being important and the fact that the Government have not signed up to that; we have been having a debate about opt-in, opt-out again. I repeat the question: does the Minister consider that the Government’s obsession with opting out of EU criminal justice measures has had an impact on tackling this problem, particularly in relation to the Schengen information system that he referred to?

[Lord Bates]

I do not accept that that is the case. We are already, and have been for some time, part of the European criminal information system, which carries a lot of information; in fact, the UK is one of the heaviest users of that system. We now want to strengthen it further and it seems a very sensible step to be part of the Schengen information system as well.