Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what recent assessment he has made of the potential effectiveness of the Prisoner Transfer Agreement with Albania.

A new Prisoner Transfer Agreement with Albania came into force in May 2022.

In May 2023, we announced a complementary arrangement whereby the UK Government has agreed to provide support to modernise and expand the Albanian prison system and in return Albania has agreed to accept the return of up to 200 Albanian Nationals currently serving sentences of 4 years or more in the UK.

The arrangement will save taxpayers’ money, as it is cheaper to house prisoners in Albania than in England and Wales, and will also free up capacity in our prisons.

We expect to see the first transfers under this agreement later this year. The deal builds on the prisoner transfer agreement signed between the UK and Albania in 2021, which came into force in May 2022. This implementation package will ensure Albania has the right processes and prison capacity in place, meaning transfers can now proceed at pace.

Albanians are the most common nationality in the Foreign National Offender population, making up approximately 14% of the total Foreign National Offender prison population. Between January 2021 and December 2022, 1,484 Albanian FNOs were removed from the UK (from custody and the community).