Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of deporting all foreign criminals currently in prison.

The removal of Foreign National Offenders (FNOs) is an important priority of this Government. We refer all FNOs in receipt of custodial sentences to the Home Office to consider deportation and we are taking decisive steps to increase removals.

In the past year, 5,179 FNOs have been deported. This is a 14% increase in returns compared to the same period 12 months prior.

We have accepted the recommendations of the sentencing review to enable earlier deportation of FNOs. On 25 June 2025, we laid legislation to expand the Early Release Scheme to allow FNOs to be removed up to 4 years before the earliest release point of their sentence (increased from 18 months now), subject to having served 30% of the custodial element of their sentence (allowing earlier removal compared to the 50% minimum time needed to serve now). This is estimated to further increase deportations and reduce demand by up to 500 prison places per year.