Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many and what proportion of foreign nationals sentenced to a period of imprisonment of at least 12 months have been deported in each of the last five years; and what mitigating factors the Foreign National Offenders Returns Command considers when determining whether deportation based on criminality is appropriate.

The Home Office publishes statistics on the returns of foreign national offenders by nationality and year. These returns are published in the Returns Detailed Datasets, Year Ending June 2024; which are available at: Immigration system statistics data tables - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

The published statistics refer to enforced returns which include deportations, as well as cases where a person has breached UK immigration laws, and those removed under other administrative and illegal entry powers that have declined to leave voluntarily

Under the UK Borders Act 2007, a deportation order must be made where a foreign national has been convicted of an offence and received a custodial sentence of 12 months or more. This is subject to several exceptions, including where to do so would breach a person’s ECHR rights or the UK’s obligations under the Refugee Convention.

Section 7 of the Immigration Act 1971 provides an exemption from deportation for Commonwealth citizens who were ordinarily resident in the UK on 1 January 1973 and ordinarily resident in the five-year period before the decision to make a deportation order. Those who can establish that they meet this exemption will not be liable to deportation and so will not be deported.

A foreign national offender is given the opportunity to make submissions as to why they should not be deported and all claims raised are fully considered and decided upon before deportation, including, where applicable, via the Courts.