Criminal Justice Act 2003 (Removal of Prisoners for Deportation) Order 2025

Lord Sandhurst Excerpts

Monday 8th September 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister for his helpful and brief introduction to what is, in effect, a relatively simple instrument. It comes against a background, as he explained, of the appalling shortage of prison places that the Government inherited and that has only got worse, inevitably, during this Government. The overcrowding that has been the result of that shortage and the crisis that has given rise to the early release scheme have to be ended as quickly as possible; for example, the use of police cells where there has been simply no space for custody within our prisons is unacceptable, and there has been an unholy scramble for places for prisoners wherever they might be found across the estate. That is the inevitable result of a prison system running at 99% of capacity.

The consequences of the prison shortage have been outlined by the Minister, and the clear goal of the Government has been to reduce prison numbers over time, although they rightly accept that that will take a great deal of time. I know the Minister is concerned to concentrate on shorter sentences and rehabilitation, but I am grateful to him for putting the numbers on this instrument—that it is expected to save 500 prison places a year, which is a significant number.

However, in one sense, this instrument is directed at an easy target, because the deportation of convicted foreign offenders, who are liable to be deported anyway, is generally justified in principle for all the reasons the Minister gave and is widely supported. It may also be said that our national Government have little interest in what happens to deported prisoners after they are deported, so that if they leave our prisons earlier than envisaged at the time of sentence, that does little harm, but the instrument rightly excludes some serious offenders from the ambit of the reduction.

However, I note the regret of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee at the lack of review of the need for changes in this early removal scheme. The committee was concerned at the lack of information given to Parliament as to both the number of foreign national offenders likely to be affected by these changes and the treatment that such deported offenders would be likely to receive in their home countries following deportation. The committee reported that

“it would have been helpful for the EM to include background information … on FNO sentences and the treatment of deported prisoners in their home countries”.

It helpfully dug out a considerable quantity of additional information that was within the public domain that it found helpful, and it reported on that.

As a general point, the interest that the United Kingdom Government have in foreign national offenders should not cease altogether when such offenders are deported. At whatever stage, the Government and Parliament have an interest in considering the fate of deportees after they left this country and any continuing risk that they might present if they should return to the United Kingdom—or to United Kingdom citizens abroad, of course. Hence, the overall conclusion of the committee was that, while it recognised the urgency of the need to reduce the pressure on prison capacity, as we all do,

“the information provided with such instruments should … facilitate full scrutiny by Parliament. This means there should be a discussion of the risks as well as the benefits of the measures and adequate background information to understand the full effects; preferably, supported by an analysis of … similar changes”.

It is clearly the committee’s view that Parliament had not had that kind of information to the level of detail that we should have done.

I endorse that conclusion. However, subject to those caveats, I broadly support the measure to enable deportation at an earlier stage of prisoner sentences following sentence.

[Lord Sandhurst (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for introducing this statutory instrument today. I begin by affirming that we on this side strongly support the principle that foreign nationals who break the law in our country also break the trust that we accord them and that they have no right to remain here. This order is therefore a welcome step which builds upon reforms that the Conservative Government made in January 2024 to advance the point at which foreign nationals could be removed from prison and deported from 12 months to 18 months before the end of their custodial sentence. The instrument before us today expands on this, increasing the maximum removal period for foreign offenders to the later of either 30% of their custodial term or four years before their earliest release date. This is estimated to result in some foreign prisoners serving only 10% of their sentences before being deported, down from the current 25%. That, as I have said, is a welcome step, but it is not enough.

By the Government’s own admission, this reform will free up, at most, just 500 places. The taxpayer currently spends upwards of £500 million annually just on housing and feeding imprisoned individuals who neither need nor deserve to be here. Five hundred fewer places in our prisons accounts for just 5% of that total cost. That is before we consider the forecast growth in the prison population. Does the Minister really believe that these numbers reflect effective policy? Perhaps what is more worrying is that since this measure has been introduced, the Government have changed their tune. On 10 August this year, the Secretary of State announced the Government’s revised position that foreign offenders should be deported immediately after receiving a custodial sentence. Earlier in the year, we tabled an amendment to the Government’s Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill which called for the automatic removal of any foreign national convicted of an offence. While it is always gratifying to see the Government following our lead, their slowness to adopt this belated measure will have real-life impacts for the law-abiding people of this country. It will take time to implement and require more time-consuming legislation. In the meantime, more offenders are charged without the prospect of immediate deportation. The taxpayer will pay for the privilege, so I ask the Minister to lay out a timetable towards immediate deportations of convicted foreign nationals.

Similarly, there is nothing preventing the continuation of the endless cycle of appeals and repeals that cause delay. It seems as if every week a foreign criminal has his deportation order blocked under the doubtful guise of human rights. In the long term, without protections against human rights manipulation, this statutory instrument could end up seeing the same number of offenders removed each year as under current policy, just a little bit earlier. That is not effective policy. Can the Minister outline how this will be avoided?

That is why the Conservatives would disapply the Human Rights Act in all immigration-related cases. No delays or obstructions in legislation would be used for means for which they were not designed. Swift, effective removal is what we require.

To sum up, we believe that this statutory instrument is a first step, albeit a small one, towards the shared goal of the removal and deportation of foreign offenders.