Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many full-time equivalent staff of his Department were working on prisoner transfer agreements on 1 April (a) 2010, (b) 2011, (c) 2012, (d) 2013 and (e) 2014.

Since 2010 there have been six officials in the MoJ and NOMS who spend a significant proportion of their time in relation to obtaining and supporting the implementation of Prisoner Transfer Arrangements (PTAs). These officials cover policy, operational and legal roles. This work is a high priority and there is coordinated director level input across government with Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and Home Office (HO) officials contributing to the objective to get compulsory PTAs.

All foreign national offenders sentenced to custody are referred to the Home Office for them to consider deportation at the earliest possible opportunity.

The Prisoner Transfer process is just one mechanism for removing Foreign National Offenders. The number of FNOs deported under the Early Removal Scheme (ERS) has increased under this Government. In 2013, we removed nearly 2,000 FNOs under ERS and under the Tariff Expired Removal Scheme (TERS), which we introduced in May 2012, we have removed over 240 FNOs to date.

Whereas this Government has begun to reduce the foreign national population in prison since 2010, between 1997 and 2010, the number of foreign nationals in our prisons more than doubled.