The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Bellamy) (Con)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who participated in this debate, in particular my noble friend Lord Jackson of Peterborough for raising this most important issue. I am not sure that I shall be able to answer in detail all the questions that I have rightly been asked in this debate, but my officials will go through the transcript and I will write to everybody to make sure that the questions are properly answered.
Briefly, by way of background, noble Lords will see from the House of Lords report that there is a dip in the numbers and that they have started to climb again since the Covid crisis. I am told that, in effect, the dip is accounted for by various difficulties encountered by the Home Office at the time. They include quite a number of legal challenges. One that went to the Supreme Court was on something then called Section 94B, which operated the principle of “deport first, appeal later”; it was lost and, as a result, 700 cases had to be redone. Then, in 2019, there were legal proceedings that, as noble Lords may remember, challenged a lot of charter flights. In the meantime, the modern slavery law came into effect, which increased the number of modern slavery claims being made by prisoners. So a combination of factors led to that decline even before we had Covid, but Covid then had a further adverse effect.
Since then, we have climbed up again, to nearly 4,000 last year—a 27% increase on the year before. I just say that by way of background. I do not accept the stricture that the Government have been in a position of chaos and incompetence; I think those were the words used. The Government have been doing their best with a very difficult situation.
Against that background, briefly, there are, roughly speaking, about 10,000 or so prisoners who are foreign national offenders. About one-third of those are on remand. We cannot do anything about that, so we are talking about 6,500 people or something of that kind. Of course, there are also foreign nationals in the community —that is the number in prison—but we are doing our level best to improve performance in that respect. As I said, we returned nearly 4,000 FNOs from prison last year.
The Lord Chancellor has talked about the new measures that we are introducing; they include the early removal scheme, with which noble Lords are familiar. Between January and March this year, almost 400 foreign national offenders were removed—a 61% increase over the same period last year. Part of this is also due to the increasing use of prisoner transfer agreements. I shall say a word about that because it has, rightly, cropped up in the debate.
The Albanian agreement came into effect, or was improved, in May 2023 in order to speed up prison transfers, with greater numbers of the most serious offenders to be sent back to Albania. That is continuing but, even in the case of Albanian prisoners, there are still procedural difficulties that cause delays in the process. For example, each transfer has to be approved by the Albanian courts, which must sanction the Albanian authorities’ power to hold the prisoners, as it were, when they arrive back in Albania. It is a lengthy process; indeed, quite apart from prisoner transfer agreements, one is wrestling with some difficult issues in physically deporting a foreign national offender. Often, there will be very late appeals and all kinds of claims raised. In many cases, there will be absolutely no documentation, so you do not even know what country they come from; you then cannot prove where to send them or prove to the receiving state that they are indeed nationals of that state. These kinds of difficulties arise, quite apart from the physical problems of having an aircraft, escorting people and all those kinds of difficulties.
One should not underestimate the operational problems here but the Government are determinedly working on them. A better process has been introduced for dealing with foreign national offenders. There is a new task force across the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice, and we have recruited 400 additional case workers to prioritise these cases; they have been in place since last month and will streamline the end-to-end process. So the Government are tackling the problem in general terms.
With that broad background, I will see whether I can deal with at least some of the questions I was asked. I will write to noble Lords on the problem of derogations from the convention, which was one of the points raised on the ECHR.
I think the problem with Jamaica has been the difficulty of reaching a political agreement with the Jamaican Government—I think that that is the case, but I will confirm it in writing. The Albanian example is working quite well. We have agreements with many other countries, but they are not always effective, because prison conditions in other countries are not very satisfactory. Sometimes, the agreement is to enable British prisoners in the foreign prison to come back—a recent example was from the Philippines—rather than for us to send people there, so it is a complicated area.
I do not think I can comment on the specific case of Abdul Ezedi in a debate such as this.
We will work very hard to implement the recommendations of the chief inspector’s report. Points about that were well made. It is another aspect where there can be improvement, but, as I said, we are well up—I gave the figure of 61%—on the equivalent period last year in our success in deporting foreign nationals.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
Incidentally, going back to the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, I once visited the San Miguel prison in Santiago, Chile, with the fabulous penal reform campaign of the noble Baroness, Lady Stern. The month before, 81 inmates died in a fire. It was the grimmest prison I have ever been to, but talking about prisons we have known is by the by.
I will press the Minister on the issue of the chief inspector’s report. He know that one of the key issues raised was the routine and repetitive use of manually accessed spreadsheets. There was no IT system that was trustworthy, to the extent that virtually any management data could be easily accessed. Is that a key imperative for the department to work on, as it prepares its formal response to the chief inspector’s report?
Lord Bellamy (Con)
I thank the noble Lord for his intervention. Yes, that is extremely important. I will write with a further update on what can be done about it. It will be no secret to noble Lords that the problem of data across the criminal justice system and the prison system is ongoing, and we are working with various systems of various ages, including those of elderly status. A great deal needs to be improved.
I will press on, having one eye on the time. One of the various points raised by the noble Lord, Lord McNally, was about the deportation of people who came here as a child. As far as they are protected, those people have to rely on Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights on family life, which is often a successful defence, because they will have no connections with the country to which they are being sent.
On other countries, the one with which we are the furthest forward at the moment, as far as I know, is Italy. The Lord Chancellor hopes to reach an agreement with Italy in the next few weeks. I do not think that I can go further than that, but there have been encouraging negotiations with Italy, and I hope that that and the Albanian situation will help significantly.
I understand that consultation with victims is conducted through victim liaison units. In the case of an FNO facing deportation, I am told that, where victims have signed up to the victim contact scheme, that consultation takes place.
I fully agree with the points made by my noble friend Lord Farmer about rehabilitation and the importance of social visits. As noble Lords know, he conducted two important reviews not long ago, and I believe the ministry has accepted all his recommendations. An important part of that work was the social aspect of prisoners. I am not aware of any reduction in emphasis being placed on that, but I will investigate and write accordingly. Almost all prisons in England and Wales now have facilities for secure video calls, or in-cell telephony. I do not know whether that is the case in Minsk or Sarajevo, but it is a considerable improvement on what used to be the case. It certainly does not exist in the United States or, I would have thought, San Miguel prison.
There are important efforts to encourage peer-to-peer support. Pilots are in progress at the moment with a particular focus on FNOs, although there are facilities for long-range contact. FNOs with no visitors can get free phone credits for overseas calls and free video calls, which is considerably better than nothing. As I said, all prisons across England and Wales offer secure video calls.
Noble Lords have raised some important issues. I hope we are grappling with them; their importance is in no way neglected. The overall situation is that the Government are making progress in this area. Noble Lords have made very good points which, if I have not already answered, I will answer in more detail in writing. I close by thanking noble Lords, particularly my noble friend Lord Jackson, for raising these important issues.