Sentencing Bill

Debate between Lord Keen of Elie and Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd

Report stage
Tuesday 6th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)]

My Lords, I shall move this amendment on behalf of the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, who unfortunately cannot be present. I wish to express first his appreciation of the time the Minister has taken to speak to him about the issue raised by this amendment. I can explain it very briefly. In the independent review conducted by Mr David Gauke, he considered whether foreign national offenders should be removed to reduce pressure on capacity and ensure that punishment was served for crimes committed in the United Kingdom. Under the then existing law, foreign national offenders had to serve 50% of their sentence but could then be removed and returned to their own state, where they would get no further punishment. The review recommended that the 50% rule be reduced to 30%—this was accepted and brought in by a statutory instrument—and that those who were sentenced to three years or less could be removed without serving any part of their sentence here. Clause 32 proposes the removal of the three-year time limit, so that any offender, however serious the offence is, can be removed without serving any part of their sentence whatever.

The amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, seeks to do three things. First, it seeks to restore the position recommended by Mr David Gauke: to ensure that people who receive sentences of more than three years could not be removed without serving part of their sentence. Secondly, it would make it clear that it is inapplicable to a person who has been deported and returns. That is to stop the revolving door of committing a crime, being deported, coming back, committing a crime and going round and round. Thirdly, it would require the Secretary of State to be satisfied, in the case of serious crimes,

“that the interests of justice are not defeated by the removal, having regard to the gravity of the offence and the impact … on those affected by it”.

There is a change from the amendment put forward in Committee in one respect, in that it drops the requirement that the offender serve his term overseas.

The most important of the three points raised by this amendment is the first: restoring the recommendation of the Gauke review. As I understand it, there are about 3,000 such offenders and it costs about £61,000 a year to keep each of them in prison here. I can see no objection to sending them back if they are to serve the remainder of the term in their own country, but it is evident from the figures that only a tiny proportion would serve such a term. The Bill as it stands, therefore, will send back at our own cost a very significant number of people who have committed crimes that deserve at least three years’ imprisonment.

It seems that the Government have said that they are not prepared to accept the amendment partly because they cannot agree to anything that will effect a reduction in prison capacity. Secondly, they are determined to make sure that the public Exchequer is relieved of the burden of paying for the imprisonment of foreign national offenders.

The purpose of this amendment is to try to reverse what can only be described as the interests of short-term expediency over the principles of sentencing, because the amendment infringes three of those principles First, if a person commits a wrong that merits three years’ or more imprisonment, that person merits equivalent punishment. Being sent back to his own country at taxpayers’ expense is not a punishment. Secondly, the purpose of sentencing is to deter crime. What deterrence is there in making it clear that, if a person comes to this country to commit a crime, he will be sent home free, without punishment? Thirdly, and most importantly, proper punishment retains public confidence in the system. If, for example, someone commits a series of shoplifting offences to go to the lower end of the three-year limit or, more seriously, comes here deliberately to commit a crime, paid for, what deterrence is there if that person knows he can go back? We hope that the Government will think again on this point.

However, on the second and third points—that is to say, dealing with the revolving door problem in the first place, while requiring the Secretary of State to be satisfied that the interests of justice are not defeated by removal, having regard to the gravity of the offence and the impact on those affected by it—why can the Government not accept them? I hope the Minister will be able to say, “Well, we’ve got to have a framework to deal with those kinds of issues” and will make it clear that, among the issues to be contained in the policy framework that governs the way in which foreign national offenders are dealt with, those two points, namely the revolving door and maintaining and examining each case to ensure that the gravity of the offence and the effect of the offender will not be that which casts doubt on the integrity of the criminal justice system, will be looked at and properly included within it. I beg to move.

[Lord Keen of Elie (Con)]

My Lords, we are grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, for the carefully framed amendment and to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, for the very careful way in which he presented the amendment. We agree with all the points made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, without qualification.

When the previous Secretary of State for Justice first intimated this policy last year, I referred to it in this Chamber as being “completely mad”. I have not deviated from that opinion, I have to confess. The idea that someone coming from a safe country in Europe will commit a series of robberies and then, when caught, will be returned to their country of origin at public expense in order to pick up a different set of identity papers or a different passport and then return yet again strikes me as quite absurd. That is the revolving door point that has been touched upon, but the other points are equally important.

Of course, they may not have come from a safe country, in which case we cannot deport them, but no accommodation has been made for that either. It is going to be optional, essentially. You may seek to argue that you have not come from a safe country and therefore you cannot be deported, so you prefer to stay in prison. It is a quite extraordinary proposal that somehow punishment lies in the fact that you have been returned to your country of origin after committing a serious offence in this country. We have a foreign national who rapes a child and flees back to his country of origin, and presumably we no longer make any efforts to extradite him because as far as this policy is concerned, he has been punished. He has gone home. What is that going to do for public confidence in the justice system? It will damage it, but I cannot see any upside. It is an impossible proposal.

David Gauke proposed, very sensibly, that there should be a minimum term of punishment, and that is necessary because it is not just punishment; it is also deterrence. Without that, we end up in the strange situation in which people commit a crime, leave for their home country at public expense and return as and when they wish to do so. We have had instances of that already. I will not go into the detailed cases at this stage in the evening, but it is not uncommon for those who have been arrested and convicted of offences to return to their country of origin and then return to these islands in due course. There have recent instances of that. We strongly support the idea that there has to be a minimum term of imprisonment in these cases, while understanding the pressure on our prisons. Does the Minister truly believe that public confidence in the justice system will be improved or even maintained as and when the full implications of this proposed policy become public?

Sentencing Bill

Debate between Lord Keen of Elie and Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd

Committee stage
Wednesday 3rd December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)]

Perhaps I could just finish my second point very quickly. It is simply that, even if the public do not think there is any harm in just deporting someone who has committed a crime, I would caution Government not to rely on public opinion. It does not always stay constant, but I can be sure that, if a serious crime is committed and someone is deported without being punished, this provision will come back to haunt the Government, and I do not want that to happen.

[Lord Keen of Elie (Con)]

My Lords, the principle of deportation of foreign national offenders attracts almost universal support. I say “almost” because the cohort of foreign national offenders may not entirely embrace the idea. However, if we introduce a system whereby they are deported without custody or punishment, I suspect that they will come on board with the idea as well.

It occurs to me that the Government are going to approach this with considerable and conspicuous care and take on board the very considered amendment advanced by the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, and Amendment 142 from the noble Lord, Lord Jackson. It will, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, said, come back to bite us if it is discovered by very professional criminals that you can come here, execute your robbery, contract killing or whatever else and then, when you are caught, we pay your air fare home. It does not make an awful lot of sense.

With regard to Northern Ireland, I would take Amendment 146 as a probing amendment inviting the Minister to explore the impact of the Windsor Framework on this proposal.

I note that, if a foreign national offender in Northern Ireland is offered the option of deportation or lengthy custody in Northern Ireland, he might well be inclined to the former, but that is just a practical proposal. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.