3 Removing foreign national offenders
from the UK
14. The Home Office's approach to processing cases
is inefficient: 20 of the 52 cases reviewed by the National Audit
Office had avoidable processing delays, including 7 where the
Home Office did not work on the case for an average of 76 days,
and 6 where delay was caused by administrative errors. To gather
information the Home Office sends each foreign national offender
a 50-question paper form, but this takes on average 32 days to
send out, and almost half are ignored and not returned. The Home
Office accepted that there were administrative failures and difficulties
in the system that need to be remedied.[27]
15. In 2013-14 there were 1,400 occasions where the
Home Office was ready to remove a foreign national offender from
the UK but the removal failed. The Home Office classified more
than a third of the failed removals as within its control (523
cases), and the remaining two-thirds (930 cases) as outside its
control. However, the Home Office told us that in fact the boundaries
between the two classifications were far from clear cut and that
some failures classified as outside its control were in fact due
to poor management practice such as where flights were cancelled,
and it intended to address all causes of failed removals in future.[28]
16. There are a number of schemes through which the
government can facilitate or encourage a foreign national offender
to leave the UK by the end of their sentence, but at 31 March
2014 there were over 1,400 foreign national offenders still in
prison and immigration removal centres after the end of their
sentence, and a further 4,200 living in the community while the
Home Office continued to try to deport them.[29]
Only 37% of the foreign national offenders removed in 2013-14
left as part of the Early Removal Scheme. Take up of the Facilitated
Returns Scheme, which offers foreign national offenders financial
incentives to comply with the deportation process, has almost
halved from 2,432 in 2010-11 to 1,347 in 2013-14 after the Home
Office reduced the amount payable to participants from up to £5,000
each to up to £1,500 each. Some foreign national offenders
held in prison beyond the end of their sentence have sued the
Home Office successfully for unlawful detention, under provisions
of the Immigration Act 1971 and Borders Act 2007. The Home Office
told us that since April 2012, courts have awarded £6.2 million
in compensation for unlawful detention to 229 foreign national
offenders, an average of over £27,000 each.[30]
17. The Home Office maintained that it considered
all foreign national offenders for removal at the earliest possible
point, but following a judicial review ruling has not made a decision
whether to deport any foreign national offender until 18 months
before their earliest removal date.[31]
The Home Office agreed that it only actually needed to apply this
rule to cases sentenced before 1 August 2008, but applied the
rule to all cases as it wanted to use the most up to date information
to avoid foreign national offenders successfully appealing against
deportation on the basis of a change of personal circumstances.
The Home Office assured us that the new Immigration Act 2014,
once fully implemented, would change fundamentally the way it
manages foreign national offenders and will allow it to speed
up and increase removals, especially as the Act will reduce the
number of grounds open to a foreign national offender to appeal
against deportation from 17 to 4. The Home Office subsequently
informed us that since July 2014, 150 foreign national offenders
had been removed despite ongoing appeals as a result of the new
Act.[32]
18. Over the past 4 years the number of British nationals
returned to UK prisons through prison transfer agreements to serve
the remainder of their sentence here, was broadly double the number
of foreign national offenders removed from the UK.[33]
The National Offender Management Service told us that very few
prison transfer agreements currently take place, as most rely
on the consent of the prisoner and others were the result of negotiations
to secure the return of British nationals from abroad. In February
2014, the National Offender Management Service assured us that
the new compulsory agreements with EU Member States would significantly
increase numbers. However, we note that despite 18 of the 28 Member
States having now agreed to the compulsory EU prison transfer
agreement there is no significant improvement.[34]
In addition, Poland and Ireland, which have the two largest populations
of foreign nationals in the prison estate, will not have compulsory
agreements in place for some time—Poland has an exemption
from the EU prison transfer agreement until December 2016.[35]
27 Qq 8, 11 and 18; C&AG's report para 3.13 Back
28
Qq 5-10; C&AG's report paras 3.21-3.22 Back
29
Qq 33-35; C&AG's report paras 12, 3.17 Back
30
Qq 38-54; Letter from Mark Sedwill to the Committee, 27 November
2014 Back
31
Qq 11-16 Back
32
Qq 4, 175; Letter from Mark Sedwill to the Committee, 27 November
2014 Back
33
Q120 Back
34
Qq 209-215 Back
35
Qq 216-217; C&AG's report para 3.20 Back
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