Clause 15
Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill
12:15 pm
Edward Garnier (Shadow Minister, Justice; Harborough, Conservative)
Subject to minor differences, the wording of amendment No. 12 is pretty well the same as the wording of amendments Nos. 87 and 88. The principle behind the amendments is the same. Amendment No. 12 would affect clause 15, while amendments No. 87 and 88 would affect clauses 19 and 20. However, I wish to concentrate on how amendment No. 12 touches on clause 15. It sets out a proposed new subsection (2A), which states:
“For the avoidance of doubt there is a rebuttable presumption that any such prisoner will be removed from the United Kingdom following his release without prejudice to any existing rights not to be, or protections from being, removed under British or European Union law.”
I am happy for “United Kingdom” to be inserted in place of “British”, if that is thought to be more appropriate in statute law.
Clause 15 deals with the potential for the removal of prisoners from the United Kingdom. It brings into play provisions in relation to the early release of prisoners and so forth.
Of the 81,547 people inside prison as of last Friday, there are approximately 12,000 foreign nationals, some of whom are EU citizens. During Prime Minister’s questions three or four weeks ago, the Prime Minister, when questioned on the matter, said that there were quite large numbers of Jamaicans, Nigerians and other foreign nationals in prisons in England and Wales. The Committee is probably in agreement that many of those people ought to be living in their own country, either in prison or not, but not at our expense.
By removing a number of foreign national prisoners who have served at least a part of their sentence in this country, we would free up a number of valuable prison spaces. The prison population is bigger than the space available inside the prisons to house them by about 250 people. Modernisation of the prison estate means that there is now sanitation inside the cell. An unintended consequence of overcrowding is the ridiculous set-up whereby cells designed for one person now have two men, sometimes three, sleeping in a space that is also used as a lavatory. There is no privacy or dignity. If one of the cell’s occupants wishes to use the lavatory, he must do so in front of the others.
I have been to some prisons where prisoners rig up a string and make a curtain using a sheet or a towel, although there are obviously difficulties in allowing prisoners to have string in their cells, as the suicide rate in overcrowded prisons is enormous. There were about 57 suicides by the mid-point of this year, although the figure may be higher. However, the number of suicides in our prisons is gross and something of which we should be ashamed. If we want to ease overcrowding, one answer is to ensure that an appropriate number of foreign national prisoners is removed quickly from our prisons once they have served their sentences.
Amendment No. 12 was tabled to act as a spur to the Government to do something about the matter. Our knowledge of the European Union legal system has shown that expelling EU citizens to their country of origin is not an apt way to prevent these people from coming back into the country, because the free movement directive and other regulations allow them to return. Some European Union prisoners have been here so long, or were here so long before they were found guilty of a crime, that under EU law or the European convention on human rights, they can claim a long-term connection with this place that prevents them from being deported. That is not necessarily the case with nationals of countries outside the European Union.
The short point—and I apologise for getting to the church by way of the moon—is that our prisons are woefully overcrowded. The Government could relieve some of that overcrowding if they pulled their socks up and started to negotiate, implementing bilateral treaties with non-EU countries to ensure that a proportion of the foreign national prisoners in our prison estate is sent home. More urgently, foreign national prisoners who are released but remain in this country as illegal immigrants or are here unlawfully should not simply be released back onto our streets. They should be taken directly from the prison and deported. There is no excuse for having such people pushed out into our streets, where they remain unlawfully and undetected.
Bullwood Hall in Essex and Canterbury prison in Kent are two prisons dedicated exclusively to housing foreign nationals who have not yet completed their sentence and—the Minister will correct me if I am wrong—foreign nationals who have completed their sentence but who have been detained pending deportation. Either way, something is wrong with the system if it cannot ensure the removal of a foreign national who would be deemed to remain in Britain unlawfully but for the fact that he has been detained. The presence of such people is not conducive to the public good, and in the right cases and in the right numbers we should relieve prison overcrowding by doing something along the lines suggested by the amendment.