Asked by: Peter Bone (Independent - Wellingborough)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to the oral statement of the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department on 18 May 2022, on Foreign National Offender Removal Flights, Official Report, column 687, in respect of each of the 112 individuals originally included on the flight manifest, whether each of those individuals were on the flight when it departed; what criminal convictions each of those individuals had; and for what reasons certain individuals did not depart on that flight.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
This Government’s priority is keeping the people of this country safe, and we make no apology for seeking to remove dangerous foreign criminals. Foreign national offenders (FNOs) who abuse our hospitality by committing crimes should be in no doubt of our determination to deport them.
We do not comment on individual cases. However, convicted criminals guilty of heinous crimes, including manslaughter, rape, robbery, child sex offences, drug offences and violent crime, and persistent offenders, were not deported on 18 May 2022. These are extremely serious offences which have a real and lasting impact on victims and communities.
All those returned are provided with the opportunity to raise claims prior to their removal. But where representations are made at the last minute, despite the offender having ample opportunity to raise these at an earlier stage, and the claim cannot be resolved in time for the flight’s departure, it can act as a barrier to removal.
We are doing everything possible to reduce legal challenges and to increase the numbers of FNOs being removed. Our New Plan for Immigration, underpinned by the Nationality and Borders Act, is the first major reform of the system in decades and will end the merry-go-round of last-minute legal challenges that stop us removing those with no right to be in the country.
The Government is committed to removing FNOs with no legal basis to be here and since January 2019 we have returned over 10,000 people from the UK.