Prisons: Foreign National Offenders

Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede Excerpts

Thursday 25th April 2024 Grand Committee

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Jackson of Peterborough, for initiating this debate, which has been very informed. I look forward to the Minister’s response in due course.

The Lords Library briefing explains that under UK legislation, the Government have a duty to consider deporting foreign nationals convicted of an offence in the UK and sentenced to at least 12 months’ imprisonment. They can remove foreign national offenders before the end of their prison sentence through various schemes and through prisoner transfer agreements. Prisons refer all cases involving foreign national offenders to the Home Office’s Foreign National Offenders Returns Command to consider whether deportation based on criminality is appropriate. The FNORC has overall responsibility for the management and removal of FNOs. Prisons which are exclusively used for foreign national offenders or are hub prisons have embedded Home Office caseworkers to help progress immigration casework.

In October 2023, the Government introduced changes to the early removal scheme under the Criminal Justice Act 2003. This extended the removal window from 12 months to 18 months, subject to the minimum required proportion of time having been served. Then in March, the Government announced that they will release prisoners up to two months early, to deal with the lack of space in our prisons. Prisoners may be released not 18 days early but up to an unprecedented 60 days early. We have argued that there are consequences to this decision, which are that people who have broken the law and, in many cases, pose an ongoing threat to the law-abiding public are directly benefiting from the Government’s decision to permit early release. Do the Government regret that they were in the position to have to make that decision?

The Government tell us that they will free up more spaces in our prisons by cracking down on the number of foreign national offenders, who are taking up space that we can ill afford to spare when they have no right to be in our country. The number that the Government deported last year are significantly lower than the number they inherited in 2010, when 5,383 foreign national offenders were deported in the last year of the Labour Government. Meanwhile, thousands of foreign national offenders are living in the community, as I think the noble Lords, Lord Farmer and Lord McNally, both said, post release for several years without being removed. Will the Minister acknowledge that this is the result of chaos and incompetence by the Government he represents, and that it is putting the public at risk and leaving Britain less safe?

The noble Lord, Lord Jackson, said—very fairly—that this problem will persist whichever political party is in government; that was a fair point for him to make when he opened his contribution. He went on to say that Albanians form a disproportionately large proportion of the FNOs in our prisons. I hope that the Minister can address specifically what he hopes will happen with the removal of prisoners back to Albania. Of course, we in the Labour Party accept the need to stop irregular arrivals and manage the deportation of FNOs as quickly as possible.

The noble Lord, Lord McNally, said that this problem is a gnat’s bite for the overall problems. I am not sure I agree with that comment. My local prison is Wandsworth Prison and I would say—this is certainly my perception, from everything that I have been told by everyone I know who works around or in that prison—that it is actually a significant problem in certain prisons. It may be a gnat’s bite overall but a very significant problem for certain prisons.

I thought I might mention my own experience in visiting foreign prisons, which I have done in various capacities over the years. I have been to a prison in Minsk, a prison in Sarajevo and prisons in Tashkent, and they are variable. It is interesting to me that the buildings in Sarajevo were about the same age as our Victorian prisons here in London. It was not too bad, actually; that was my experience. In the prison in Minsk, while the dormitories were very overcrowded, there was in fact a lot of open space where the prisoners could exercise better, in many ways, than what we see in our own country. The prison in Tashkent had a very good bakery and there seemed to be an active programme in trying to rehabilitate people. So, in my experience, prisons overseas are not as bad as one might fear from reading about them in certain types of documentation.

I think I have heard the themes of the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, in other speeches which he has given. He opened by saying that rehabilitation is hampered by overcrowding, which is of course true. He talked about social video calls and asked whether they can be kept going; I do not know whether the Minister will be able to comment on that, but that seems to be a desirable thing to keep going as far as possible. The noble Lord also spoke about the work of mentors in prisons. It reminded me that I recently read Chris Atkins’ book about being a prisoner in Wandsworth Prison and the work that he did as a mentor; he literally saved lives while working as a mentor there.

The noble Lord, Lord Farmer, made a lot of pertinent and interesting points. Nevertheless, this debate is about foreign national offenders. I look forward to the Minister’s answers to the questions raised, in particular by the noble Lord, Lord Jackson.