Half of 1,000 criminals in Labour border farce are still living in Britain
10 years after scandal cost Clarke job as Home Secretary...
HUNDREDS of foreign criminals released from prison in a notorious scandal ten years ago have still not been deported, it was revealed yesterday. Former Labour Home Secretary Charles Clarke was forced to resign in 2006 after it emerged more than 1,000 foreign criminals had been released without being considered for deportation.
They included killers and rapists, and some went on to commit further serious offences.
But new figures released by the Government show that, ten years on, more than half of those involved are still in the country and 22 have still not even been tracked down.
Tory MPs last night said the figures underlined the need for tougher measures to boot out foreign undesirables.
North West Leicestershire MP Andrew Bridgen said: ‘For over a decade we have heard that it is the ambition of successive governments to deport foreign criminals at the end of their sentence.
‘However, the aspiration and the actuality have not matched up, for whatever reason.’
Fellow Tory MP David Morris, said making it easier to deport foreign criminals should be a priority in the Brexit negotiations.
He added: ‘I’m absolutely certain coming out of the EU will make it easier to deport these people. I am sure [Home Secretary] Amber Rudd will be looking at this because the British people expect it – it is as simple as that.’ Tony Blair’s government was rocked by the foreign prisoner scandal. Following Mr Clarke’s resignation, the Home Office was declared ‘not fit for purpose’.
The scandal showed that 1,013 foreign prisoners had been released without deportation being considered as an option.
But the new figures reveal the removals system is still not working. As of the second quarter of this year, just 456 of the 1,013 released had been removed from the country or deported, and 22 have not been tracked down.
Some 475 more remain in Britain despite their cases having been concluded, and 55 are still going through deportation proceedings. Five are currently serving another prison sentence.
In many deportation cases criminals use human rights laws to challenge their removal, or officials struggle to secure passports from their home countries, which do not want to take them back.
The details will be embarrassing for Theresa May, who spent much of her six years as Home Secretary trying to fix the border and deportation systems.
Mrs May effectively killed off the UK Border Agency in 2013 after five years of catastrophic failure.
Announcing that UKBA would be cut in two and brought back into the Home Office, she condemned the agency, set up under Labour, for its ‘ closed, secretive and defensive culture’.
Mrs May admitted fixing the system and clearing the huge backlog of cases would take many years. She laid the blame for the agency’s failings squarely at Labour’s door, saying it was unable to cope with the number of migrants admitted by the last government.
Earlier this summer MPs slammed the Government for failing to deport the equivalent of a ‘small town’ of foreign criminals.
The Home affairs committee said it was deeply concerning that 5,789 offenders from overseas were walking the UK’s streets – the highest number since 2012.
Ministers were urged to take action to significantly reduce the overall number of 13,000 foreign convicts in the country.
It found the top three countries criminals hailed from were all within the EU, with Poles accounting for nearly one in ten foreign offenders – 983 in total – while 764 were from Ireland and 635 from Romania. A Home Office spokesman said: ‘Foreign nationals who abuse our hospitality by committing crimes in the UK should be in no doubt of our determination to deport them. Since 2010... nearly 32,000 foreign criminals have been removed from Britain.’
‘Brexit makes it easier to deport’ ‘Backlog will take many years’