Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what estimate she has made of the number of foreign nationals in Northern Ireland prisons, broken down by (a) nationality, (b) sentence status, (c) offence type and (d) immigration status.

The management and operational delivery of prisons in Northern Ireland is a devolved matter and the responsibility of the Northern Ireland Prison Service.

The specific information you have requested regarding the foreign national prison population is not available from published Home Office statistics.

However, all foreign nationals who receive a prison sentence in the UK are referred for deportation consideration at the earliest opportunity by the respective prison service, irrespective of their immigration status. There has been an increase in the return of foreign national offenders (FNOs) by 36%, with almost 10,000 FNOs being returned since this Government came to power.