Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will make it his policy to reduce the number of Pakistani nationals in UK prisons by returning them to their country of origin.

Any foreign national who comes to our country and abuses our hospitality by breaking the law should be in no doubt of our determination to deport them. More than 40,000 foreign national offenders have been removed from the UK since 2010, and in the last financial year a record number of over 6,300 were removed.

An agreement allowing Pakistani nationals to be removed from the UK during their prison sentence so that they continue to serve their sentence in Pakistan is in place, but is currently suspended due to the corrupt release of prisoners transferred to Pakistan in 2010. Work is underway with the Government of Pakistan to resolve the issues this has presented and restart transfers with appropriate safeguards in place. In the meantime, Pakistani nationals continue to be deported from the UK following completion of their prison sentences.