Frank Dobson
Main Page: Frank Dobson (Labour - Holborn and St Pancras)Department Debates - View all Frank Dobson's debates with the Home Office
(13 years ago)
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Damian Green
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for those helpful and practical suggestions, some of which the UKBA already attempts to operate. He will be aware that most countries co-operate with the process entirely and are extremely helpful but, sadly, some countries are much less helpful. One measure that we are taking to ensure that the situation improves in the years ahead, as it needs to, is persuading Governments who are less keen than others on helping us with returns to be more helpful and co-operative about accepting their nationals back.
Frank Dobson (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)
When a prisoner is sentenced to imprisonment and deportation, why do we not just deport them straight away and save the expense of sending them to jail?
Damian Green
Successive Home Secretaries and Immigration Ministers have grappled with that suggestion. One problem is that we would need to know that offenders would be sentenced to some kind of equivalent term in their own country. Otherwise, we would have the terrible situation that somebody could commit a serious crime in this country in the full knowledge that the worst thing that would happen to them if they were caught and convicted would be that they were returned home free to their own country. I cannot believe that the right hon. Gentleman wants that to happen. That is why successive Governments have not taken that path.