Contribution
My Lords, I am pleased to speak to Amendment 72 in my name and emphatically support Amendment 34 in the names of my noble friends on the Front Bench.
The amendment seeks to enshrine in law the responsibility of and duty on the Government to remove from this country those who do not have the automatic right to be here and who have committed a serious enough offence to have been sentenced to a term of imprisonment. If you come to this country and make it your home, you must understand that if you break the law, there are consequences. The amendment would apply to those who have committed crimes serious enough that they present a risk to the security and public safety of the British people.
The increase in the number of foreign national offenders between 2021 and 2024 was three times greater than that of British nationals, at 19.4% compared to 5.9%. In 2024, there were 20,866 non-summary convictions, of which violence and sexual offences by foreign national offenders amounted to 14,016 crimes, or 67% of offences, and a quarter of jailed sex offenders come from just five countries. We also have over 11,000 foreign national offenders housed in our prison estate, as my noble friend said. Albanians take up over 1,000 prison places. To my knowledge, they have been part of neither the British Empire nor the Commonwealth and have never been citizens of the European Union. Therefore, why is this the case and what are Ministers doing about it?
At the same time, the number of foreign national offenders released and not deported rose to 19,244 by the end of 2024. One of the reasons for this is the backlog of legal cases by those who have challenged deportation. The Government need to take strong action to clear this backlog and remove new offenders who present themselves.
This Government can blame only themselves, in all honesty, for this crisis, for which they have no solutions. Their cultural cringe to the European Court of Human Rights and their activist so-called jurists have facilitated the abuse of the central tenets of human rights and obligations by our own activist judiciary, as well as by some rapacious and cynical human rights lawyers.
The necessity of this amendment—the imperative of placing such a duty on a statutory footing—has been shown by recent events. A foreign offender who was imprisoned for sexual assault was accidentally released and then deported only after he was recaptured. He was then paid £500 so that he would not try to challenge his deportation. He was given taxpayers’ money in case he tried to claim asylum. The Government should not be in a situation where officials must decide that the paying of foreign offenders to leave nicely without causing a disturbance is the only way forward. That is not the best course of action. An individual who has been convicted and has served time for sexual assault should not have the ability to hold our immigration system to ransom.
On a wider question, could the Minister advise the House on the progress made in the returns deal with the Balkan states, and the review of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which my noble friend Lord Harper challenged him on two months ago, on 8 September? On that date, the Minister stated:
“We will simplify the rules and processes for removing foreign national offenders and take further targeted action against recent arrivals who commit crime in the UK before their offending can escalate … Later this year … we will table legislation to strengthen the public interest test, to make it clear that Parliament needs to be able to control our country’s borders and take back control over who comes to and stays in the UK”.—[Official Report, 8/9/25; col. 1164.]
I ask the Minister, when are we likely to see this new legislation?
I concede that the Government have moved in a positive direction. Around 5,100 foreign national offenders were deported in 2024, which, to their credit, is more than the just under 4,000 deported under the previous Government. That said, a large number chose to leave voluntarily.
I spoke in Committee about a
“chronic issue of mismanagement in the criminal justice system”.—[Official Report, 8/9/25; col. 1157.]
That mismanagement has now been brought to public attention. In the 12 months leading to March 2025, 262 prisoners were released by mistake, a 128% increase compared to the previous year. A criminal justice system as dysfunctional as ours, as error prone as this, needs clarity brought to it where possible, and that is what this amendment brings.
I agree that my own party’s record was suboptimal, but this Government have had 16 months to develop—