Foreign National Offenders (Exclusion from the UK) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-03-11
Topic: Law and Crime
David Nuttall (Conservative, Centre-right): If that is the case, it does seem strange—I am sure it will seem very strange to our constituents The NAO report acknowledged that the Government have put more resources into managing and removing foreign national offenders and made it clear that progress had been made, but it highlighted that the police had carried out an overseas criminal record check on only 30% of foreign nationals arrested. It made it clear that obtaining relevant documents such as passports at an early stage would greatly speed up the process of removal, and that fostering closer links between immigration officers and front-line police officers would speed up the process The Public Accounts Committee provided a commentary in its report, "Managing and removing foreign national offenders", which was published in January 2015 following the NAO report. The Committee’s report states that "police forces have been slow to recognise the importance, when arresting foreign nationals, of checking their immigration status and whether they have a criminal record overseas and they rarely use search powers to find evidence of identity and nationality." Whatever the reasons for that—it could be a lack of training or a lack of awareness—it is significant, because establishing nationality at an early stage would allow for further background checks to be carried out The report also states: "Only 30% of foreign nationals arrested were checked against one key overseas database for a criminal record in 2013–14, and the great majority of police forces do not have automated links between fingerprint machines in their police stations and the Home Office’s immigration databases." The Committee suggested that a massive £70 million could be saved by fostering and developing such links The NAO noted in its report that in 2013-14, more than one third of foreign national offenders who were removed left as part of the early removal scheme. That is the scheme that returns foreign national offenders to their country of origin before they would be let out of prison if they were back here in the UK. The NAO also noted a key improvement in reducing the number of failed removals from 2,200 down to 1,400, but 1,400 still fail. That number is still far too high. I hope we will hear some detail from the Minister on why so many removals fail and what is being done to improve the situation Very often, we hear that problems with the delivery of Government services are due to a lack of resources, but the Public Accounts Committee noted that the number of staff working in foreign offender management had actually increased from fewer than 100 in 2006 to more than 900 in 2014—a huge percentage increase. The taxpayer can rightly expect to see an enormous improvement for that increase. It is helpful to consider the cost to the taxpayer of dealing with foreign national offenders, because it demonstrates what an enormous drain on taxpayer resources this problem is. The NAO estimated that the average cost of managing a single foreign national offender was about £70,000 a year. The total bill for 2013-14 was an estimated £850 million, which confirms a figure that was mentioned earlier. I should add that that does not represent the total cost of a foreign national offender to British society. The figure is an estimate from the NAO, because there is an absence of definitive data. There is of course the possibility that the actual cost is much higher when one considers all the costs, from the investigation of the crime through to managing an offender in the community. Perhaps the most notable finding by the NAO, which the PAC also raised, was that managing foreign national offenders costs an estimated £100 million a year more than managing British prisoners. The Committee also noted that the Home Office did not know the reoffending rates of foreign national offenders in the community. The public will want to have confidence that such matters are now being addressed and recorded. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s comments on that point Both the NAO and the PAC highlighted the delays in the removal process. The NAO carried out a review of 52 cases in which a foreign national offender had been successfully removed and discovered that 20 cases had had avoidable processing delays. They included seven instances where the case had not been worked on for an average of 76 days, and a further six cases where administrative errors had delayed the process. In order to gather information on foreign national offenders, the Home Office sends out to each one a 50-question paper form. On average, it takes 32 days just to send out the questionnaire, which does not exactly give the impression of speed or urgency. It is perhaps not surprising that foreign national offenders are not so keen on administrative matters such as paperwork. It is not a surprise that almost half of the forms are never, ever returned.