Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to the tweet on foreign national offenders published by her Department on 9 October 2020, what representations she has received on the potential conflation of the UK's asylum system and the deportation of offenders from EU countries (a) in that tweet and (b) in her Department's social media strategy.

The Home Office makes no apology for deporting Foreign National Offenders; it is right that we do so.

This tweet referred to two different groups.

The first group were foreign national offenders who broke our laws and abused our values, who we successfully returned to Lithuania. We are grateful for the ongoing close cooperation of our Lithuanian partners in tackling crime, and for their specific cooperation in this instance which was essential for the removal of the foreign national offenders mentioned in the tweet.

The second group was made up of migrants from outside the European Economic Area who had already claimed asylum in Italy, and who we planned to return under the Dublin Regulation. The Italy leg of the flight did not take place and our efforts to return those who arrived on small boats via illegally-facilitated routes were frustrated by legal claims.