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13 Sep 2006 : Column 2436W—continued
Foreign Criminals
Mr. Heald: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what assessment his Department has made of whether any of the convicted foreign nationals who were released without being considered for deportation are on the electoral roll; and whether steps are being taken to check the electoral roll to identify them. [74082]
Mr. Byrne [holding answer 25 May 2006]: Checks on all those foreign national prisoners who were released without consideration of deportation action have been carried out on an individual basis. These checks were conducted on a case-by-case basis and not collated centrally and so the overall results are available only at disproportionate cost.
Jeremy Corbyn: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will list in descending order according to the number of prisoners concerned the countries of origin of foreign national prisoners who have (a) been released without consideration for deportation and (b) been deported from Northern Ireland since February 1999. [75220]
Mr. Byrne: I refer my hon. Friend to the written ministerial statement of 29 June 2006, Official Report, column 19WS, made by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary. In this statement he explained that the Director General of the Immigration and Nationality Directorate (IND) had written to the Home Affairs Committee on 29 June providing the most accurate data available at that time on the 1013 individuals who were released without deportation consideration. This information was collated centrally and quality assured by the Department and is the most accurate and robust data currently available to the Department. A copy of this letter has been placed in the Library of the House along with previous statistical information on those foreign nationals released without deportation consideration.
Mr. Paterson: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many civil servants employed by his Department are engaged in duties related to the release of foreign offenders. [68621]
Mr. Byrne: Within the Department the number of employees engaged in duties relating to the release of foreign offenders is not disaggregated from the overall number of employees and therefore not readily available.
Mr. Hayes: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many foreign nationals who were not deported after release from prison were released early; and how many of these were not interviewed by the parole board. [68744]
Mr. Byrne: The information requested is not centrally available and could be provided only at disproportionate cost.
Mr. Binley: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how long a foreign national who has committed a crime in the UK may be detained when there is little prospect of their home country supporting their deportation. [84299]
Mr. Byrne: Where a deportation order is in force against any person, the Secretary of State may give directions for the person’s removal to either a country of which he is a national or citizen, or a country or territory to which there is reason to believe that he will be admitted. Immigration Act powers to detain are not time-limited. However, domestic and ECHR case law provides that detention must last for no longer than is reasonably necessary for the purpose for which it is authorised and must not be of excessive duration. In the case of a person being deported or removed from the UK detention would be lawful provided there was a realistic prospect of deportation or removal within a reasonable period of time. Where a detainee refuses to cooperate with the removal process detention may be prolonged and the risk of reoffending is a factor that may be taken into account in determining whether the duration of a person’s detention is reasonable. This position has been supported by the Courts.
Malcolm Bruce: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department pursuant to the answer of 11 July 2006 to Questions 68218, 68529, 68530 and 68531, on deportation of foreign prisoners, how many of the nine named individuals have been deported since serving their sentences. [86008]
Mr. Byrne [holding answer 17 July 2006]: As I advised the hon. Member previously, it is not the Department's policy to comment in the public domain on individual cases.
Mr. Harper: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what (a) instructions and (b) guidance relating to foreign national prisoners he has issued to (i) the Governor of each prison in Gloucestershire, (ii) the Chief Constable of Gloucestershire Constabulary, (iii) the Chairman of Gloucestershire Police Authority and (iv) the head of the Probation Service in Gloucestershire; and if he will place copies of that guidance in the Library. [67476]
Mr. Byrne: A revised Prison Service Order (PSO 4630) on Immigration and Foreign Nationals was issued to all prisons, including those in Gloucestershire on 17 July.
No additional instructions or guidance were issued by the Department to the Chief Constable for Gloucestershire or the Chairman of Gloucestershire Police Authority. Normal procedures for dealing with prisoners locally were applied.
The National Probation Directorate issued a Probation Circular to all chief officers on 5 June which set out the requirements in relation to the management of foreign national prisoners subject to statutory supervision and advising them to implement a system to provide regular checks on their supervision.
Peter Luff: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many foreign prisoners are held in UK prisons; and how many of them (a) came to the UK (i) on a visitor’s visa, (ii) on a work permit and (iii) as asylum seekers known to the authorities but not granted asylum, (b) were not known to the authorities before their arrest and (c) were citizens of other EU countries. [68492]
Mr. Byrne: In respect of information on the nationality of foreign nationals held in prison establishments in England and Wales I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, gave to the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) on 18 July 2006, Official Report, column 403W. The information requested on the immigration status of foreign nationals held in UK prisons is not recorded centrally and only available through examination of individual case files at disproportionate cost. In a written ministerial statement of 19 July 2006, Official Report, column 29WS, I set out the progress the Department is making in respect of improving our processes for dealing with and removing foreign national prisoners.
Dr. Julian Lewis: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether foreign criminals deported after serving their sentences can be prevented from re-entering the United Kingdom when their countries subsequently join the European Union. [68911]
Mr. Byrne
[holding answer 8 May 2006]: A person entering or seeking to enter the United Kingdom in breach of a Deportation Order (DO) is an illegal entrant as defined in section 33(1) of the Immigration Act 1971 and so is not permitted to seek re-entry to the United Kingdom. Records of individuals deported from the UK are added to the UK’s Immigration database deployed at all UK border control points,
against which those seeking entry to the UK are routinely checked. An individual who was deported from the United Kingdom prior to their country acceding to the European Union, and thus prior to their acquisition of rights of movement under EC law, would not be able to exercise the right of free movement without first seeking to have the deportation order revoked.
Mr. Clappison: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department pursuant to the Prime Minister’s oral answer of 17 May 2006, Official Report, column 991 to the Leader of the Opposition, how many foreign nationals sentenced to serve a prison sentence have been deported at the halfway point of their sentence under the provisions of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 since the Act came into force. [72722]
Mr. Byrne: The information requested is not centrally available and could be provided only at disproportionate cost
Mr. Hollobone: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what the total cost was of holding (a) non-British EU nationals and (b) non-EU foreign nationals in prisons in England and Wales in the last year for which figures are available. [80202]
Mr. Byrne: The Prison Service does not collate centrally the cost of keeping individual prisoners, broken down by their nationality.
Mr. Sheerman: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many prisoners in UK prisons are citizens of (a) Albania, (b) Romania, (c) Turkey and (d) Poland; and what percentage of the overall prison population each figure represents. [90956]
Mr. Sutcliffe
[holding answer 11 September 2006]: The table gives the numbers of prisoners held in prison establishments in England and Wales who were citizens of (a) Albania, (b) Romania, (c) Turkey and (d) Poland at 31 December 2005. These figures have been drawn from administrative IT systems. Although care is taken when processing and analysing the returns, the detail collected is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large scale recording system, and so is not necessarily accurate to the last whole number. As the written ministerial statement of 19 July 2006, Official Report, columns 28-30WS, from my hon. Friend the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality indicated, the Home Secretary has identified eight priority areas to be addressed in order to improve the effectiveness of arrangements for deporting foreign national prisoners. The second of these priority areas is that there is currently no legal requirement for prisoners to provide evidence of their nationality, or consistent processes for nationality to be recorded. Before the summer, staff in IND and the criminal justice agencies worked together to design possible ways of addressing this gap, including a new legal requirement. A programme of activities is currently in hand, managed through the Office for Criminal Justice Reform, to test the options with frontline staff across the criminal justice system and to examine their feasibility and relative merits, in order for
recommendations to be produced by the end of October. Information on the numbers of foreign national prisoners serving prison sentences in prison
establishments in Scotland and Northern Ireland is the responsibility of the Scottish Executive and Northern Ireland Office respectively.
| Listed foreign national prisoners in prison establishments in England and Wales as at 31 December 2005 | ||
| Number of prisoners | As percentage of prison population | |
Helicopter Searches
Norman Baker: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department pursuant to the answer of 5 June 2006, Official Report, column 40W, on helicopter searches, for what reason the police helicopter based at Luton was used in this search rather than the one based at RAF Benson. [90877]
Mr. McNulty [holding answer 5 May 2006]: The police helicopters based at RAF Benson and Luton are constituent parts of the Chiltern Air Support Consortium. The duty period for the police helicopter based at RAF Benson ended at 02.30 on 18 July 2003. The new duty period commenced at 08.00 on 18 July. Therefore the two flights that were made in support of the search for Dr. David Kelly on the 18 July 2003 were made by the police helicopter based at Luton. The first flight was from 02.50 until 04.05, followed by a refuel at RAF Benson and a second flight from 04.30 until 05.10.
Hunting
David Taylor: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many people have been prosecuted under the provisions of the Hunting Act 2004 since November 2005. [90805]
Mr. McNulty: The Hunting Act 2004 came into force on 18 February 2005. Data on the number of prosecutions in 2005 will be available in the autumn.
Identity Cards
Mr. Garnier: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what plans he has to address the issues identified with his Department’s planned identity card scheme by the Science and Technology Committee; on what date the first identity card will be issued; how much has been spent on the scheme; and when he expects to be able to produce accurate total costings for the scheme. [90858]
Joan Ryan: The Government welcomes the Report from the Science and Technology Committee and is grateful for the attention they have given to this crucial element of our plans to enhance the security of all legal residents of the UK. We are considering the report very closely and will give a full response in due course. ID cards will be implemented as rapidly as possible, starting with biometric residence permits for foreign nationals in 2008, and rolling out to UK nationals thereafter. With regard to past spending on the identity cards scheme, I refer the hon. Gentleman to the answer given to the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Clegg) on 19 July 2006, Official Report, column 553W. A report on projected costs of the scheme over the next ten years will be laid before Parliament as required by Section 37 of the Identity Cards Act on 9 October. A written ministerial statement explained on 20 July that the report would have been due on 30 September but, because of the dates of recess, will be laid before Parliament on its return. The report cannot be laid when Parliament is not sitting.
Immigration and Nationality Directorate
John Barrett: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when the Immigration and Nationality Directorate will reply to the fax from the hon. Member for Edinburgh West of 31 May with regard to Ghanzanfar Ali. [79785]
Mr. Byrne: The hon. Gentleman’s inquiry has now been dealt with and I understand that he no longer wishes to pursue this question.
Danny Alexander: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what the total (a) cost to callers and (b) revenue to his Department was from the Immigration and Nationality Directorate number 0870 606 7766 in each year that the number has been in operation. [81680]
Mr. Byrne [holding answer 29 June 2006]: Information on call charges and revenue for phone number 0870 606 7766 is available for the financial years April 2002 to March 2006 presented in the following table. The Immigration and Nationality Directorate (IND) ceased taking any revenue from this number from 1 April 2005.
| £ | ||
| April to March | Cost to callers | IND revenue |
Information Technology
Mr. Weir: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many (a) USB (i) flash drives and (ii) memory sticks, (b) compact discs, (c) DVD-ROM discs, (d) laptop computers, (e) external computers hard drives, (f) internal computer hard drives and (g) desktop computers were purchased for use in his Department in each month since March 2005. [88760]
Mr. Byrne: IT hardware used by the core Home Department is not purchased but provided under a PFI contract by its IT service provider, Sirius. Details of any peripheral purchases made outside of the Sirius contract are not held centrally and to obtain this information would incur disproportionate cost.
Inter-country Marriage
Damian Green: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when he plans to announce the outcome of his review of the restrictions on marriage between UK citizens and non-UK citizens. [91042]
Mr. Byrne:
The High Court has found the certificate of approval regime incompatible with ECHR on two grounds: that it discriminated against non-Church of England marriages and that it was disproportionate in not seeking evidence other than immigration status to establish whether or not a marriage was genuine. We shall be appealing the second part of the judgment on proportionality grounds and will await the outcome of that appeal before proceeding with any further review.
In parallel we are working with the Department of Constitutional Affairs and the Church of England to consider how best to respond to the court’s judgment on the discrimination point.
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