Lord Hintze

The government recognises the importance of international talent to key growth sectors and is therefore sending a clear and confident signal: that we welcome the world’s best minds to help us drive our Industrial Strategy and wider growth mission, and that they will find the environment, support and opportunities they need to thrive here.

The government will publish an NHS 10 Year Workforce Plan in the Spring. This will set out plans to ensure there is a sustainable medical workforce, as well how we will act on retention, productivity, training and attrition with the ambition to reduce international recruitment to less than 10% by 2035.

The government also set out its plans to attract the right talent and develop the right skills for the financial services sector as part of the Financial Services Growth and Competitiveness Strategy, published in July 2025 at Mansion House.

The number of foreign national offenders (FNOs) held in prison is regularly published as part of the Offender Management Statistics Quarterly series. The latest published data can be found within table 1.Q.10 of the prison population tables, showing a snapshot of the population as of 30 June 2026. This shows that there were 10,134 (3,283 remand, 6,431 sentenced and 420 non-criminal) foreign nationals held in custody representing around 12% of the total prison population. The number of FNOs in the prison population decreased by 6% compared with 30 June 2025.

We are focused on removing FNOs to protect the public and ease the burden on taxpayers. Early next year we will implement the Sentencing Act power to allow the removal of determinate sentence FNOs immediately after sentence.

In the two years to 30 June 2026, returns of FNOs increased by 41%, compared with the previous two years.