Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many foreign national offenders, who having served their sentence, were subsequently deported in the last 12 months.

Foreign offenders should be in no doubt of our determination to deport them. Any foreign national who is convicted of a crime and given a prison sentence is considered for deportation at the earliest opportunity. We make every effort to ensure that a Foreign National Offender’s (FNO) removal by deportation coincides, as far as possible, with their release from prison on completion of sentence. More than 12,200 FNOs have been removed since January 2019 protecting victims and making our streets safer.

The Home Office publishes data on the number of Foreign National Offenders (FNOs) returned from the UK in each quarter in the Immigration statistics quarterly release - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk). The latest data, published on 24 November 2022, can be found in Returns-summary-sep-2022-tables.ods (Tables Ret_02a/Ret_02b) and Detailed Returns tables (Table Ret_D03/D04). Figures relate to year ending June 2022.

We deal with significant and complex challenges when seeking to return those who have no right to be in the UK to their country of origin or lawful place of return. These challenges can include travel documentation, late applications, late appeals and broader non-compliance with a lawful returns process. The Nationality and Borders Act will make it easier and quicker to remove FNOs and those with no right to be in the UK. The new legislation extends the period an FNO can be removed from prison under the early removal scheme (ERS) from a maximum of 9 months to 12 months, providing the minimum requisite period has been served. The Act will also streamline the appeals process by introducing an expanded One Stop Process aimed at reducing the extent to which people can frustrate removals through sequential or unmeritorious claims, appeals or legal action.