Party leader hopeful will give foreign criminals ‘three strikes’

RISHI SUNAK has pledged a “three strikes and you’re out” rule to deport more foreign criminals.

The leadership contender and former chancellor said he aimed to double the number of foreign offenders deported from the current 3,000 a year.

He proposed to lower the threshold for deportation to six months in jail, instead of the current 12 months, which would extend it to thieves, burglars and people who threatened others with a weapon. This would be allied to a “three strikes and you’re out” rule under which foreign criminals sent to jail three times will also be deported, even if no single custodial sentence exceeded the new six-month minimum.

A burglar convicted of three offences that land them in prison would be deported under his plans, even if they did not spend six months in prison or 12 consecutive months in prison.

Announcing the pledge, Mr Sunak said: “We are far too soft on foreigners who commit crime in our country so I will double the number of foreign offenders we deport.” The number of foreign criminals released from prison has reached a record high of more than 11,000. Official figures show that, at the end of March, there were 11,300 foreign national offenders who had been released but not deported.

Deportations of the most serious foreign criminals – including convicted rapists, murderers and robbers – have also fallen to their lowest numbers on record, down from 2,555 in 2016 to 956 in the last year.

Mr Sunak’s plans, however, were described as a “desperate gimmick” by Chris Philp, a former immigration minister and a backer of leadership contender Liz Truss, who said it would just add to the number in the queue.

He said it failed to address the reason for failed deportations which was legal challenges by human rights lawyers and other countries failing to take them back. “What’s stopping us removing a number of murderers and rapists, let alone someone who stole a pack of crisps, are repeated meritless legal challenges,” said Mr Philp.

Ms Truss has suggested she would be prepared to withdraw the UK from the European Convention on Human Rights to combat “bogus human rights, asylum and modern slavery claims” and increase deportations.

However, in a further move to drive down crime, Mr Sunak said he would introduce a new offence targeted at prolific criminals which would see them receive an automatic extra year in jail.

It would mean career criminals would have an automatic one-year custodial sentence added to their latest crime. Nine per cent of career criminals with on average 19 convictions each are responsible for 52 per cent of crime, excluding fraud. He will task the Ministry of Justice to determine the threshold of crimes at which the extra year in jail would take effect. He said: “I will cut crime by locking the most prolific offenders up, keeping them locked up, and building the prison space needed to do so. Crime hits the least well-off hardest. It is the local shopkeeper who has his cash-register raided. The frail grandmother who is mugged.

“The young boy whose life is ruined by getting mixed up with the wrong crowd. Cracking down on foreign offenders and career criminals will dramatically cut crime across our country.”