Apr. 29 2024
Source Page: Rwanda: country policy and information notesFound: Print this page Related content Pakistan: country policy and information notes Albania
Apr. 25 2024
Source Page: UK-Rwanda Treaty completes ratification processFound: Europe exploring similar agreements, including Austria, Germany, Denmark, and Italy in their deal with Albania
Apr. 25 2024
Source Page: 45 OSCE participating States condemn arbitrary detention of Ukrainian civilians by the Russian Federation: Joint Statement on publication of the Moscow Mechanism ReportFound: Madame Chair, I am delivering this statement on behalf of 45 participating States: Albania, Andorra,
Apr. 25 2024
Source Page: UK and Italy to build on cooperation to stop migrant crossingsFound: Government’s Rwanda scheme while Italian Interior Minister Piantedosi spoke about Italy’s deal with Albania
Mentions:
1: Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con - Life peer) on their initiatives to address this situation—such as the May 2023 prisoner transfer agreement with Albania - Speech Link
2: Lord McNally (LD - Life peer) time at the MoJ, we had a number of exchanges and training programmes with Balkan countries, including Albania - Speech Link
3: Lord Bellamy (Con - Life peer) to speed up prison transfers, with greater numbers of the most serious offenders to be sent back to Albania - Speech Link
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps he is taking to manage prison population levels.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
We continue to focus on the prison capacity challenge.
To meet rising demand, we are building c.20,000 modern, rehabilitative prison places – the biggest prison build programme since the Victorian era. We have already delivered c.5,900 of these, including through our two new 1,700 places prisons, HMP Five Wells and HMP Fosse Way, and c.590 Rapid Deployment Cells across 11 sites. By the end of 2025, we are on track to have delivered around 10,000 places in total.
On 11 March, I announced the next steps in our plan, to allow us to go further and faster in removing FNOs. This includes expediting prisoner transfers with our priority partners such as Albania and the creation of a new taskforce across the HO and MoJ to change the way we process FNO cases radically.
We have also put in place short-term measures across the prison estate to expand useable capacity, while ensuring our prisons remain safe for staff and offenders.
The Government will continue to monitor the evolving situation with demand for prison places carefully, so that we can make sure we have the right approaches in place to maintain the capacity required for a safe and effective criminal justice system.
Apr. 23 2024
Source Page: Rwanda Bill to become law in major illegal migration milestoneFound: Our new agreement with Albania has cut Albanian small boat arrivals by more than 90 per cent; and we
Apr. 22 2024
Source Page: Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's statement on the plan to stop the boats: 22 April 2024Found: And because a third of all arrivals were coming from Albania… …we struck a deal that reduced illegal
Laid - 22 Apr 2024 In Force 28 Apr 2024
These Regulations make changes to the operation of official controls during the transitional staging period (“the TSP”), established under Annex 6 to Regulation (EU) 2017/625 of the European Parliament and of the Council on official controls and other official activities performed to ensure the application of food and feed law, …
Found: 10 00 0809 21 00 0809 29 00 0809 30 10 0809 30 90 0809 40 05 0809 40 90 Any third country other than Albania
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will make it his policy to publish statistics on the (a) nationality and (b) visa status of offenders convicted in England and Wales every 12 months.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
The Ministry of Justice currently publishes the self-declared nationality of those entering custody as well as those in the prison population as part of their quarterly Offender Management Statistics: Offender management statistics quarterly: July to September 2023 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).
We refer all recorded foreign national offenders awarded a custodial sentence to the Home Office who can carry out immigration checks alongside consideration of each case for deportation. An offender’s nationality and immigration status is not routinely collected by the courts. We are working with the Home Office to explore the potential for the publication of further statistical data related to the nationality and immigration status of offenders.
The removal of foreign national offenders is a Government priority and my department continues to work closely with the Home Office to maximise the number of deportations.
On 11 March, the Government set out a plan to increase the number of foreign national offenders removed through:
the recruitment of 400 additional caseworkers and streamlining the end-to-end removal process;
extending foreign national conditional cautions to foreign national offenders with limited leave to remain; and
amending deportation policy to enable foreign national offenders given suspended sentences of 6 months or more to be considered for deportation.
These actions build on our expansion of the Early Removal Scheme to allow for removal of foreign national offenders up to 18 months before the end of the custodial element of their sentence and expediting prisoner transfers with priority countries such as Albania and seeking to conclude new transfer agreements with partner countries.
Published figures show that FNO returns have increased following the pandemic, in the latest 12-month period (ending December 2023) by 27% when compared to the previous 12-month period. Between January 2019 and December 2023 17,795 FNOs have been removed.