Most foreign criminals convicted by a UK court will be deported immediately, instead of 30% of the way through their prison sentences, under plans announced by the government.<\/p>\n
The justice secretary, Shabana Mahmood<\/a>, has proposed a change in legislation that will give the government the power to deport most foreign prisoners as soon as they are convicted and incarcerated.<\/p>\n However, foreign terrorists, murderers and other serious offenders who have been given indeterminate sentences will continue to serve their time in the UK before being considered for deportation.<\/p>\n Prison governors will also retain the power to decide against deporting a foreign criminal who has been given a fixed-term sentence \u2013 known as a determinate sentence \u2013 if, for example, they consider the offender poses such a serious threat to the UK\u2019s interests or national security that they should remain behind bars in a British prison.<\/p>\n The justice secretary, Shabana Mahmood, said foreign criminals would be \u2018sent packing\u2019 if they abused UK hospitality. Photograph: Ben Whitley\/PA<\/p>\n Offenders who are deported will be barred from re-entering the UK and the measures will apply to all foreign national offenders already in custody, as well as those newly sentenced, to reduce taxpayer expenditure on foreign prisoners.<\/p>\n Each prison place costs the government \u00a354,000 a year on average and foreign offenders make up about 12% of the total prison population, according to the Ministry of Justice.<\/p>\n The government has already passed legislation that will come into force in September, allowing prison governors to deport foreign criminals who have served 30% of their prison time, as opposed to the current 50%.<\/p>\n Under the latest proposed powers, which must be voted on by parliament before they come into law, the amount of time most foreign prisoners must serve in UK prisons before deportation would be reduced to 0%.<\/p>\n Mahmood said the government was taking \u201cradical action\u201d and the legislation would ensure deportations happen \u201cearlier than ever before\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cOur message is clear: if you abuse our hospitality and break our laws, we will send you packing,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The Prison Service is at nearly 97.5% capacity and came within days of collapse on three occasions<\/a> in the last few months of Rishi Sunak\u2019s government, an independent review by a former prisons watchdog found on Tuesday.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Get the day\u2019s headlines and highlights emailed direct to you every morning<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n After taking power in July 2024, Keir Starmer responded to the crisis by allowing some offenders to leave prison after serving 40% of their sentence, arguing that an early release scheme was necessary to \u201cavert disaster\u201d and reduce overcrowding.<\/p>\n The government has since deported more than 5,000 foreign prisoners, an annual increase of 14%, and invested \u00a35m on a special taskforce to speed up removals of these offenders from almost 80 jails.<\/p>\n Despite this, \u201crecord numbers of violent and sexual offenders from abroad\u201d are serving time in UK prisons, the shadow justice secretary, Robert Jenrick, said.<\/p>\n He blamed Starmer for refusing to change \u201cbroken human rights laws\u201d which he claimed were preventing the government from deporting foreign criminals. \u201cIt\u2019s a farce,\u201d he said. \u201cHe needs to grow a backbone \u2026 so we can actually deport these individuals.\u201d<\/p>\n Jenrick added: \u201cIf countries won\u2019t take back their nationals, Starmer should suspend visas and foreign aid. His soft-touch approach isn\u2019t working.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Most foreign criminals convicted by a UK court will be deported immediately, instead of 30% of the way…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":331620,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[748,393,4884,12,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-331619","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-northern-ireland","13":"tag-scotland","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115001175269932450","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=331619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331619\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/331620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=331619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=331619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=331619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}