Sadiq Khan – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sadiq Khan on 2014-06-26.

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many foreign national prisoners were repatriated to their home countries to serve their custodial sentence in each year since 2010.

Jeremy Wright

The tables below sets out the number of prisoners who have transferred from a prison in England andWales to a prison in their state of nationality since 1 January 2009.

The list includes one foreign national prisoner who was returned to a British Overseas Territory in 2011 under the Colonial Prisoners Removal Act 1884.

We remain determined to secure compulsory Prisoner Transfer Agreements wherever possible, in order to increase the number of foreign national prisoners who are able to transfer to prisons in their home countries. 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 nationals who are 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 256 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.

Whereas this Government has begun to reduce the foreign national population in prison since 2010, between 1997 and 2010, the number of foreign nationals in our prisons more than doubled.