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As I said, this will have an impact regarding the demand on prison places. The justification for the change in the Bill is really to reflect the position that being subject to a curfew does not equal a deprivation of liberty whereas remand to custody clearly does. That is why each curfew day will provide a potential credit against sentence of no more than half a day. This credit is not being made on the basis that defendants are being deprived of their liberty, but it is a credit for the fact that they have complied with their bail conditions while having their liberty restricted on a preventive, rather than a punitive, basis. The credit is made on the basis that, even though being under a curfew is less arduous than being in custody, both are intended as a preventive measure to secure the judicial process rather than as a measure designed to punish the offender.
The noble Lord suggested that the nine hours might provide a perverse incentive. I certainly hope not. The question, “Why nine hours, with no credit for shorter periods?” was implicit in what he said. It would be too complicated to relate credit to the number of hours that an offender was subject to curfew with electronic monitoring. There has to be a cut-off point and we think nine hours is appropriate, bearing in mind the degree to which the curfew impinges on the defendant’s daily life.
The noble Lord asked why credit could not be given for other bail conditions, such as residence requirements. We consider that the level of restriction imposed by an electronically monitored curfew is greater than those other requirements. Where there are difficulties about evidencing compliance, such restrictions are often coupled with an electronically monitored curfew where credit would be given.
Ultimately, we see this as a useful measure. It will help with some of the issues we have with the prison population. It can also be seen as a sensible preventative measure with regard to encouraging people who have been remanded on bail. On that basis, I commend it to your Lordships.
Lord Kingsland: I cannot fault the Minister on the clarity of his response, which I entirely understand although I completely disagree with it. I think the public will find this unacceptable, and I am surprised that the Government have not thought that aspect of the proposal through. It would be much more understandable if people in a bail hostel were allowed to use part of their time there as a set-off against the
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Clause 27 [Application of section 35(1) of the Criminal Justice Act 1991 to prisoners liable to removal from the UK]:
Lord Kingsland moved Amendment No. 92:
“( ) For the avoidance of doubt, there is a rebuttable presumption that any prisoner liable to removal will be removed from the United Kingdom following his release without prejudice to any existing rights not to be, or protections from being, removed under British or European Union law.”
The noble Lord said: We come now to Clause 27 and the removal of foreign nationals. I hope we can have a constructive debate, because I think we share the Government’s approach to this matter. There are over 10,000 foreign nationals in prison in the United Kingdom at the moment, which is a substantial percentage of the total number of those in prison, although deportation went up last year. The figure quoted in another place was that last year 2,784 prisoners were transferred out. The right honourable gentleman Mr Hanson said in November that we were on target to meet the Prime Minister’s aim of removing 4,000 prisoners from England and Wales that year. I do not know if the Minister can tell us whether that target was met. It may be a bit early to reach any conclusions, but plainly the Government are keen to increase the number of prisoners who are sent back to their country of origin or to some other place beyond our borders.
Interestingly, some nationalities are represented quite powerfully in our prisons. I understand that there are more than 1,300 Jamaican prisoners, over 1,000 Nigerian prisoners, nearly 500 prisoners from Vietnam, nearly 400 from Somalia and around 375 from China. Some countries have a particularly large number of their nationals in prison here in the United Kingdom. We have, as I understand it, agreements with 97 countries to repatriate prisoners to serve sentences in their home countries. These countries range from Albania and Australia to Venezuela and Ukraine. However, I believe that it is a condition of those agreements that the prisoner has to agree to leave the United Kingdom to serve his or her term of imprisonment in his own country. Those agreements are of some importance but they operate only with the co-operation of the prisoner. We cannot, under one of those agreements, force somebody to go back to their own country and serve their term of imprisonment there.
The thing that is exercising me is to what extent the problems we face in this area are legal problems and to what extent they are administrative problems. As I
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It is clear that we face a much more difficult problem with those prisoners who are members of EU countries than in other cases because, as your Lordships will know, various rights under EU treaties give citizens from other member states rights to enter and remain in this country for an indefinite period. There is a certain futility about deporting this class of prisoner because they can come back the next day under EU treaties. But of course that does not apply to those who are not citizens of the EU, and it is on those that we need to focus in this debate.
It is plain that there has been discordance between the immigration authorities and those who are responsible for the management of prisons about the movement of these people, particularly regarding when they are likely to be released from prison. The authorities have been extremely slow to act to ensure that anybody who is liable to deportation is properly monitored before the appropriate measures are taken. I want to be clear how confident your Lordships' House can be about the measures that the Government wish to put in place. With those introductory remarks, I beg to move.
Lord Ramsbotham: I support the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, and especially his last remarks on where this clause gets us. On a number of occasions in this House we have debated the problems posed in prisons by foreign national prisoners, particularly in regard to deportation, because deportation is part of their sentence. It is not something that has to be waited for or applied for; it is in the sentence. It has always seemed extraordinary to me that the deportation process does not take place during the period of the sentence so that, when the sentence comes to an end, the prisoner makes one move from the prison to the airport and out.
At the moment, because the deportation is not being processed during the prisoner’s time in prison, he is moved at the end of his sentence to a deportation centre or to an immigration centre—not the same place at all; prison rules do not apply there. The people who run these immigration centres tell me that up to 50 per cent of the people they have there are ex-prisoners awaiting deportation. If you go into the reasons for the various disturbances in places such as Yarlswood and Harmondsworth, you find that many of them were provoked by these frustrated ex-prisoners not knowing quite what is happening.
I had hoped, in the context of a Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill, that the Government would take the opportunity to clarify that and make it certain that procedures were in place; namely, that administrative procedures of deportation should be completed before the end of the sentence, so that there is no delay in the deportation process. As currently drafted, I cannot see that this clause will do anything to help either the prison or the immigration
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9.45 pm
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: This has been an extremely interesting debate, which I accept may be wider than the clause in the Bill. I will start with the figures I have, showing the foreign national prisoner population rising from just over 4,500 in 1997 to just about 11,300 in December 2007, which is about 14 per cent of the total prison population. Although the number of foreign national prisoners has clearly risen considerably, I understand that the proportion held here is lower than in other major European Union countries, but that does not take away the problems that we face at the moment. I will echo the figures that the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, referred to concerning the numbers from particular countries. From Jamaica, it is 1,278; from Nigeria, 1,146; from Vietnam, 460; from Pakistan, 406; from Somalia, 394 and from China, 386.
The noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, asked about prisoner transfer agreements. It is true that it remains a voluntary process, which accounts for the small number of foreign national prisoners who were repatriated last year under such agreements; that stood at 111. The UK currently has prisoner transfer agreements with 98 countries and territories. We have negotiations for further bilateral agreements with Vietnam, Ghana, Libya, Nigeria, Botswana and Kenya. I understand that we hope to begin negotiations with China later this year; agreements with Jamaica and Pakistan were signed in 2007, and are subject to ratification. We expect the agreement with Pakistan to enter into force early this year, while the Jamaican agreement cannot enter into force until amendments have been made to Jamaican law.
On consent, in 2006 Parliament amended the Repatriation of Prisoners Act 1984 to remove the need for prisoners to consent to transfer. Prisoner consent is still required under all our existing agreements, but the Government intend to seek to put in place future agreements that do not require that. The success of it will depend largely on the willingness of other countries to enter into such agreements.
One needs to acknowledge the fact that, notwithstanding all of the problems that have been faced, a great deal of progress has been made in the past year. For instance, sustained improvements to the deportation system over the past 18 months have seen the Border and Immigration Agency deliver a record performance. More foreign national prisoners are leaving the country than ever before. I have the figures for 2007, showing that we are removing or deporting foreign national prisoners at a record rate. Some 4,200 were removed then, an increase of almost 80 per cent on the previous year.
I accept that time-served foreign national prisoners cause particular problems to prisons, because such prisoners are required to be treated as equivalent to remand prisoners and often cannot be moved quickly to the detention estate. That means that they suffer uncertainty about their removal dates, which can lead to distress or disorder.
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The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, referred to the need for effective relationships between the Prison Service and the Border and Immigration Agency. My understanding is that those relationships have significantly improved in the past year or so, but I acknowledge that prisons and independent monitoring boards remain concerned about the current situation. I think that noble Lords would accept that improvements have been and are continuing to be made.
We believe that the provisions in this clause will be a useful contribution to improving the situation. They will also reduce certain demand within our prison population. This has to be seen in the context of having to deal with what is and has been a difficult problem. We are getting a grip on it, but this debate will be an important contribution to making sure that we continue to deal with this matter with a sense of urgency.
Lord Kingsland: I am most grateful to the Minister for his reply. Could he say something more on uncertainty about removal dates? To take up the extremely helpful contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, surely it should be possible for a certain amount of planning to take place when the prison sentence of someone who has also been sentenced to deportation is approaching its end. I am not sure whether the planning should be done by either the Border and Immigration Agency or the Prison Service, or perhaps by both in tandem; but surely the planning could be done two or three months before the sentence ends so that there is a quick passage from the ending of the sentence to the deportation. Why is it necessary for these people to go through long periods of uncertainty before they finally leave the country? This seems to be a crucial part of the story.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: I hinted that I accepted that more needs to be done to ensure that both services integrate their efforts. There is a protocol of agreement between the Prison Service and the Border and Immigration Agency. Sometimes there can be distinct problems because there is, for example, a lack of space in the immigration detention estate. I understand that transfers of time-served foreign national prisoners to immigration removal centres take place daily. However, due to the nature of the offences and behaviour of some individuals, it is sometimes necessary for them to remain in prison accommodation for security and control reasons. So there can be practical issues as well.
I am happy to send to noble Lords the protocol agreement that sets out the criteria for detaining individuals subject to immigration detention in prison accommodation. However, I accept the general point made by the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, that we
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Lord Kingsland: The Minister’s reply suggests that the most important part of the problem is administrative co-ordination, rather than a lack of particular legal powers to act. I am most grateful to him for offering to send this protocol. I am sure that I shall find it most interesting reading. I understand that certain prisoners need to be kept in secure accommodation until the last minute. Nevertheless, it ought to be possible within, say, a week of the ending of a prison sentence for a person to be deported.
In those circumstances, there would not be an excessive demand on space, either in prison accommodation or other secure accommodation which is specifically tasked for potential deportees. I see the Minister nodding which is, in a way, the complete answer to my question.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: The fact that I was nodding from a sedentary position should not be taken as assenting.
Lord Kingsland: It certainly suggests a degree of boredom very close to sleep.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: I want to assure him that I will speed the protocol to him so that he can read it as quickly as possible. If I was nodding, it was to agree with him that we need to do everything we can to make the system as efficient as possible. I agree with that. I do think that we are making progress, but I do not think one can simply say that there are administrative issues. There are some real practical issues as well. I would commend those services in their approach. The clause helps in a modest way, but I am certainly happy, along with the protocol, to write to the noble Lord with further details about how we think we can deal with those specific problems if he would like that.
Lord Kingsland: I am most grateful. It is extremely satisfying that we have been able to end on such a harmonious note. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord Bach: I beg to move that the House do now resume.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
- House adjourned at 9.57 pm
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