Lord Avebury
Main Page: Lord Avebury (Liberal Democrat - Excepted Hereditary)Department Debates - View all Lord Avebury's debates with the Home Office
(13 years ago)
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Lord Avebury
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their response to the recommendations by the independent Chief Inspector of the UK Border Agency on how the agency manages foreign national prisoners.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Henley)
My Lords, this is an important report and the United Kingdom Border Agency has taken its recommendations seriously. Of the eight recommendations, four were accepted in full, three in part and only one was rejected. We have taken steps to implement and reinforce policy and procedures relating to the management of foreign national offenders. I have placed a copy of the full response in the Library.
Lord Avebury
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that response, but does he not agree that the UKBA’s lukewarm response to the Chief Inspector’s recommendation that it should reduce the number of decisions that are overturned on appeal was disappointing? As the UKBA must have a good idea of the likely adverse decisions of the court in most of the one-third of appeals that it loses, is it not both perverse and costly to the public purse to continue acting on the presumption that, where the deportation threshold is met, only in exceptional cases will deportation breach Article 8? Secondly, what is the Government’s strategy for reducing the number of foreign nationals who remain in prison after their sentences have expired, mainly because of non-co-operation by the prisoner or his embassy with the process of obtaining an emergency travel document?
Lord Henley
My Lords, I do not accept that our response to that particular recommendation was lukewarm. We accepted it in part and we accept that there is a need to improve the quality of our decision-making. We also accept that it is necessary to increase the number of those whom we manage to deport, as and when their sentences end. The number of those who have not been deported has come down steadily over the past few years.