Simon Hughes
Main Page: Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat - Bermondsey and Old Southwark)Department Debates - View all Simon Hughes's debates with the Ministry of Justice
(13 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Nick Herbert
As I said, more than 5,000 prisoners have been removed. Of course, the situation will change in December when the EU prisoner transfer agreement comes into force. As a consequence of that, we will be able to remove many more prisoners to serve their sentence in other countries.
Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)
I thank the Minister for his robust answer. Of the nearly 200 countries in the UN whose citizens could potentially be here in prison, do the Government have any targets for the number of additional agreements we expect to implement outside the EU, or in particular to implement with those countries whose citizens constitute the largest number of prisoners in this country when they should be somewhere else?
Nick Herbert
We have to negotiate this with individual countries. We cannot simply remove prisoners to countries to serve a sentence there unless those countries accept it, but we can compulsorily remove prisoners if the countries agree. We already have agreements with Uganda, Rwanda and other countries, and an agreement is being negotiated with Nigeria. We would like to negotiate as many more arrangements as we can, but some countries simply disagree.