Philip Hollobone – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Philip Hollobone on 2014-04-01.

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many foreign national prisoners were transferred to secure detention in their home country under (a) compulsory and (b) voluntary prisoner transfer agreements in each of the last five years.

Jeremy Wright

The table below sets out the number of prisoners who have transferred from a prison in England and Wales to a prison in their state of nationality in the last five years on both a compulsory and voluntary basis.

With the implementation of the Council Framework Decision 2008/909/JHA (The EU PTA) by the United Kingdom in December 2011 prisoners can be transferred on a voluntary or compulsory basis. Since the implementation of the EU PTA in December 2011 a total 18 EU Member States, including the United Kingdom, have brought the EU PTA in to force.

Compulsory Prisoner Transfer Agreements can be difficult to negotiate, but we remain determined to secure them wherever possible. In January this year we signed a compulsory transfer agreement with Nigeria and last year we signed an agreement with Albania. We expect to see prisoner transfers to both these countries before the end of this year.

We are also working hard to increase the number of Foreign National Offenders removed from prison under the Early Removal Scheme (ERS) and the Tariff Expired Removal Scheme (TERS). In 2013, we removed nearly 2,000 FNOs under ERS and under TERS, which we introduced in May 2012, we have removed 237 prisoners to date.

The numbers reported here are drawn from a Prison Service Case Tracking System. Care is taken when processing these cases but the figures may be subject to inaccuracies associated with any recording system.