Philip Davies – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Philip Davies on 2016-04-29.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what guidance her Department has provided to the Courts and Tribunal Service on obtaining and using overseas conviction data in criminal proceedings.

James Brokenshire

Most criminal records requests made by UK authorities are made by the police, where a subject has been arrested and is the subject of an investigation.

Where an investigation leads to a criminal prosecution, Prosecutors are required to make the courts aware of all convictions, including overseas convictions, in bail and sentencing hearings. Further, section 144 and schedule 17 of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 makes it clear to judges that convictions from foreign jurisdictions should be considered during criminal proceedings, whenever they are available.

In the last three years (2013/14, 2014/15 and 2015/16) 39,028, 60,226, and 95,156 requests respectively, were made by the police to EU Member States for previous convictions of foreign nationals under the European Criminal Records Information System (ECRIS), an increase of over 140% in that time.

In those same years, 19,018, 34,549 and 38,890 requests respectively were made by the police to countries outside the EU for previous convictions of foreign nationals, an increase of over 100% in that time.

To improve the availability of overseas convictions data in criminal proceedings, the Digital First programme, led by the National Police Chiefs Council, is working to improve the information held on Digital Case Files to ensure that overseas criminal convictions are routinely obtained and passed on to the courts.