Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to remove foreign national offenders from the UK.

The Government is clear foreign nationals who abuse our hospitality by committing crimes should be in no doubt of our determination to deport them.

Any foreign national who is convicted of a crime and given a prison sentence is considered for deportation at the earliest opportunity and since January 2019 we have removed 7,985.

For non-European Economic Area (EEA) nationals, deportation will be pursued where it is conducive to the public good including where a person receives a custodial sentence of 12 months or more, commits an offence that caused serious harm or is a persistent offender. European Economic Area (EEA) and Swiss citizens, and their family members, who are protected by the EU Withdrawal Agreement Act 2020 are considered for deportation on public policy and public security grounds where it concerns conduct (including any criminal convictions relating to it) committed on or before 31 December 2020.

Our New Plan for Immigration will make it easier to deport foreign criminals with no right to be in the UK and keep our citizens safe.

The Home Office publishes data on the number of Foreign National Offenders (FNOs) returned from the UK in each quarter in the ‘Immigration Statistics Quarterly release’. The latest data, published on 27^th May 2021, can be found in tables Ret_02 and Ret_02q of the returns summary tables. The latest data relate to the calendar year 2020.