Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how much capacity within the prison estate will be created via the deportation of foreign national offenders by 31 December 2025.

The removal of Foreign National Offenders (FNOs) is a priority of this Government. Deporting FNOs as quickly as possible protects the public, reduces pressures on prison capacity and lessens the associated expense to the taxpayer.

From 5 July 2024 to 4 July 2025 there were 2,632 Early Removal Scheme (ERS) removals from prison, which is a 10% increase compared to the 2,385 in the same period 12 months prior.

And this Government is going further: on 23 September we changed the law to reduce the time that FNOs must serve in prison before removal to 30% of their prison sentence. In steady state we expect this change will free up approximately 500 additional prison spaces a year.

Additionally, the Sentencing Bill currently before Parliament proposes to remove the minimum time to serve requirement altogether so that FNOs can be eligible for deportation immediately after they are sentenced.

The timing of when prison place savings will be realised from deporting FNOs is dependent on the Home Office’s rate of removals which will continue to be monitored over the coming months.