Judges release 3,500 foreign criminals

By Tom Whitehead

MORE than 3,500 foreign criminals who should have been deported are back on the streets after being released from jail by judges, ministers said yesterday.

Damian Green, the immigration minister, blamed judges after figures revealed that nine in 10 overseas criminals who should have been sent home are free.

Separate figures showed that the number of foreign offenders removed from Britain fell by nearly a fifth this year.

The majority of the freed criminals are able to stay and fight deportation because of human rights laws, Mr Green said.

He said that data protection laws left him powerless to tell another MP whether a murderer who killed a constituent was a foreign national.

He was called to the House of Commons yesterday to answer an urgent question after figures from a leaked memo at the weekend said there were at least 4,238 foreign criminals awaiting deportation who were not in custody.

Foreign criminals released from custody have committed two murders, three kidnappings, 14 sexual offences and 27 other violent crimes. Mr Green told MPs that the most up to date figure for those not in detention was, in fact, lower at 3,940, and that 90 per cent of those had been released by judges, rather than the Home Office.

Most are let out by the courts because there is no immediate prospect of them being deported, he said. That is because of human rights battles to stay in Britain, the situation in their home country or a lack of co-operation by the offender or his home government in getting essential travel documents.

Mr Green said 60 per cent of successful appeals against deportation were based on human rights challenges. The Home Office was powerless and must release them. He said: "When this happens, the [UK Border] Agency works closely with both the police and the National Offender Management Service to reduce the risk of reoffending. Deportation action continues in all cases."

Separate figures showed that in the first nine months of 2011, some 3,331 foreign criminals were deported, down 690 on the 4,021 removed in the same period last year.

Chris Bryant, the shadow immigration minister, described the drop as "astounding". He said: "So far on your watch, we have seen numbers of staff at UKBA going down, numbers of foreign national offenders deported going down, and numbers of foreign criminals in our midst going up. Don't you realise that's the wrong way round?"

Labour demanded reassurances that Home Office ministers know the "precise whereabouts" of foreign criminals awaiting deportation.

Mr Green insisted the Government was "doing everything in our power to increase the number and speed of removals". He pledged to tackle human rights laws that hinder deportations, and that more foreign criminal-only prisons will be opened.

[top] [back]