Managing and removing foreign national offenders

• Report: Managing and removing foreign national offenders
• Report: Managing and removing foreign national offenders (PDF 168KB)
• Inquiry: Managing and removing foreign national offenders
• Public Accounts Committee

The Rt Hon Margaret Hodge MP, Chair of the Committee of Public Accounts, and Richard Bacon MP today said:

"There has been a complete failure to improve the management and removal of foreign national offenders. Despite firm commitments to improve and a massive ten-fold increase in resources, the system still appears to be dysfunctional. 
The number of foreign nationals in prison has stayed stubbornly at around 10,000, and the number of foreign national offenders removed from the UK peaked at 5,613 in 2008–09 and has not matched that level since. Indeed the figure fell to 4,539 in 2011–12 and it remains below the peak levels. This is just not good enough.

Furthermore, as of March 2014 there were still 4,247 foreign national offenders in the community post sentence awaiting removal, and of these around 1 in 6 – 758 – had absconded.
Shockingly, 151 foreign national offenders have been released without even being considered for deportation at all since 2009, and the Department was forced to pay out £6.2m in compensation payments to 229 foreign national offenders because of Home Office delays in dealing with cases since April 2012 – that is an average of £27,000 each.

We are dismayed to find so little progress has been made in the eight years since this Committee last looked at this issue.
Last year alone the cost of managing and removing foreign national offenders was estimated at some £850 million – £100 million more than managing an equivalent number of British national prisoners.
There is a worrying combination of a lack of focus on early action at the border and police stations, poor joint working in prisons, inefficient caseworking, very poor management information and non-existent cost data.

Opportunities to prevent foreign nationals committing offences and going to prison are being missed. There is a lack of data at the border on crimes that have been committed overseas which increases the risk of foreign criminals entering the UK undetected.
When police forces make arrests they are not routinely checking their immigration status and whether they have a criminal record overseas. For example, only 30% of foreign nationals arrested were checked against one key overseas database for a criminal record last year. At least £70 million a year could be saved if police forces made better use of the information available on this and other databases.

Processing foreign national offender cases for removal starts too late, takes too long and costs too much. At the most basic, it takes on average 32 days to send out the 50 question paper form to start the process and almost half of these forms are ignored or not returned. The approach to case working is grossly inefficient, often featuring avoidable processing delays and administrative errors.
Managing the removal of foreign national offenders in prison needs to be better coordinated, particularly between immigration and prison officers.

The schemes to facilitate or encourage a foreign national offender to leave the UK by the end of their sentence are having limited success. There are over 5,600 foreign national offenders still in prison, immigration removal centres or living in the community after the end of their sentence while the Home Office continues to try to deport them.

The Home Office will need to act with urgency on the recommendations we make in this report if it is to secure public confidence in its ability to tackle effectively these and the wider immigration system issues on which we have previously reported."

Margaret Hodge was speaking as the Committee published its 29th Report of this Session which – on the basis of evidence from Mark Sedwill, Permanent Secretary, Home Office, Mandie Campbell, Director General, Immigration Enforcement, Home Office, Michael Spurr, Chief Executive Officer, National Offender Management Service and Steve Rodhouse, Deputy Assistant Commissioner—Specialist Crime and Operations, Metropolitan Police – examined Managing and removing foreign national offenders.

It is eight years since this Committee last looked at this issue. We are dismayed to find so little progress has been made in removing foreign national offenders from the UK. This is despite firm commitments to improve and a ten-fold increase in resources devoted to this work. The public bodies involved are missing too many opportunities to remove foreign national offenders early and are wasting resources, through a combination of a lack of focus on early action at the border and police stations, poor joint working in prisons, and inefficient caseworking in the Home Office. This, combined with very poor management information and non-existent cost data, results in a system that appears to be dysfunctional. Our concerns about the system were not allayed by the evidence we received. The Home Office will need to act with urgency on the recommendations we make in this report if it is to secure public confidence in its ability to tackle effectively these and the wider immigration system issues on which we have previously reported.

The Government aims to remove as many foreign national offenders as quickly as possible to their home countries, to protect the public, to reduce costs and to free up spaces in prison. At the end of March 2014 there were 8,003 foreign national offenders in prison in England and Wales, and a further 4,247 living in the community pending removal action, having finished their sentence. The Home Office has overall responsibility for the removal of foreign national offenders, and works with the Ministry of Justice, the National Offender Management Service, the Foreign & Commonwealth Office and the police to expedite removal. The National Audit Office estimates that in 2013–14 the cost of managing and removing foreign national offenders was some £850 million, £100 million more than managing an equivalent number of British national prisoners.

There has been very little progress in removing foreign national offenders from the UK, despite firm commitments in 2006 to remove more and a substantial increase in resources to do so. When this Committee reviewed the management and removal of foreign national offenders in 2006 it found systemic failure. The Home Office treated the detention, release and deportation of convicted foreign national criminals as separate, uncoordinated operations, and there was poor communication between the bodies involved. In 2006 the Home Office committed to comprehensive action to improve arrangements for the deportation of foreign national offenders. But it has failed to achieve this and little sustained progress has been made. At 31 March 2006 there were 10,231 foreign nationals in prison. At 31 March 2014 there were 10,649. The number of foreign national offenders removed from the UK peaked at 5,613 in 2008–09 and has not matched that level since. Indeed the figure fell to 4,539 in 2011–12 and despite an improvement to 5,097 in 2013–14 remains below the 2008–09 levels. This is despite the fact that the number of staff working on foreign national offender cases has risen from less than 100 in 2006 to over 900 in 2014. We are not convinced by the argument put forward by the Home Office that the lack of progress is due to the inherent complexity of the system and overall policy framework and an increase in the number of appeals by foreign national offenders. It is difficult to see how the removal of foreign national offenders can be a genuine priority for the Home Office given that the issue did not feature in one of its business plans until 2013.

Recommendation: The Home Office should set out how it will improve the management of foreign national offenders, the specific measures against which it expects to be held accountable, and the progress it expects to make against each measure in the future. We expect to see significant progress in managing and removing foreign national offenders by the end of 2015.

The Home Office still lacks the data it needs to manage foreign national offenders effectively. This Committee pointed out in 2006 that the Home Office did not have the key data it needed to manage foreign national offenders and that there had been inconsistencies in the evidence provided to the Committee. Very little appears to have changed in the following eight years. The Home Office admitted that its data are still incomplete, poor in places and does not support decision making. It could not answer some of our basic questions during the evidence session on matters such as the reoffending rates of foreign national offenders discharged from prison and living in the community. Furthermore, on key areas of concern, such as the number of foreign national offenders released into the community without being considered for deportation, data are incomplete. The Home Office does not know the costs of managing and removing foreign national offenders, and so does not know which interventions or processes are most cost-effective. Our recent report Reforming the UK border and immigration system found very similar issues across other Home Office areas.

Recommendation: The Department needs to fundamentally rethink what management information strategy it needs, including identifying the data it needs across all its immigration information systems. It must then act to implement the required changes without further delay.

Opportunities to prevent foreign nationals committing offences and going to prison are being missed. The risk of foreign criminals entering the UK undetected is increased by the lack of data at the border on crimes that have been committed overseas. Furthermore, police forces have been slow to recognise the importance, when arresting foreign nationals, of checking their immigration status and whether they have a criminal record overseas and they rarely use search powers to find evidence of identity and nationality. Only 30% of foreign nationals arrested were checked against one key overseas database for a criminal record in 2013–14, and the great majority of police forces do not have automated links between fingerprint machines in their police stations and the Home Office’s immigration databases. At least £70 million a year could be saved if police forces made better use of the information available on these databases. Operation Nexus, a pilot to improve the identification and removal of immigration offenders, shows promise but it has not been rolled out across police forces, despite the idea first being considered in 2007. We are also concerned that the Home Office chose to delay publication of the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration's report on Operation Nexus for 5 months after he had completed it.
Recommendation: The Home Office, working with the police, needs to make much better use of existing information from overseas and at home, to prevent more potential foreign national offenders from entering the UK, to ensure all arrested foreign nationals not entitled to remain in the country are removed, and to help other criminal justice bodies better manage foreign national offenders throughout the system.

Processing foreign national offender cases for removal takes too long and costs too much. There are unnecessary delays in starting the process for removing foreign national offenders. At the most basic, it takes on average 32 days to send out the 50 question paper form and almost half of these forms are ignored or not returned. The Home Office has not been making a decision on whether to deport foreign national offenders until 18 months before their earliest removal date from prison, even though it has not needed to apply this limit to individuals sentenced after 2008. The approach to case working is grossly inefficient: 20 of the 52 cases reviewed by the National Audit Office had avoidable processing delays, including 7 where the Home Office did not work on the case for an average of 76 days, and a further 6 cases where delays were caused by administrative errors. The Home Office accepts that the reason for failing to remove a foreign national offender in a third of cases was caused by factors within its control. We found the position to be worse. In many other cases factors which the Home Office classifies as outside its control are actually due to its own poor management and case working practices, such as where flights are missed or cancelled.

Recommendation: The Home Office and the Ministry of Justice should undertake a full review of the end-to-end process for foreign national offender removal, focusing on where procedures can be streamlined and made more efficient.

Managing the removal of foreign national offenders in prison needs to be better coordinated. There are 14 designated prisons where immigration officers work with prison officers to remove foreign national offenders earlier in their sentence. But a lack of coordination between immigration and prison officers can reduce opportunities to speed up foreign national offender removal. For example, in one prison visited by the National Audit Office immigration officers and prison officers could not use each other’s IT systems because of different levels of security clearance. The Home Office has not evaluated whether the use of designated prisons is working or represents value for money. Indeed the impact of focusing immigration offenders in a small number of prisons means that some prisons with large numbers of foreign nationals have no coverage from immigration officers.

Recommendation: The Home Office and the National Offender Management Service should evaluate whether designated foreign national offender prisons result in more early removals, and if so extend their use. While this work is ongoing both organisations should make a renewed effort to ensure that within each designated prison, immigration officers and prison officers work together as if they are a single team.

Schemes designed to remove foreign national offenders from the UK have not delivered the required results. There are a number of schemes through which the government can facilitate or encourage a foreign national offender to leave the UK by the end of their sentence, but they are having limited success and there are over 5,600 foreign national offenders still in prison, immigration removal centres or living in the community after the end of their sentence while the Home Office continues to try to deport them. Only 37% of the foreign national offenders removed in 2013–14 left as part of the Early Removal Scheme. Take up of the Facilitated Returns Scheme, which offers foreign national offenders financial incentives to comply with the deportation process, has almost halved from 2,432 in 2010–11 to 1,347 in 2013–14 after the Home Office reduced the amount payable to participants. In addition, very few foreign national offenders are transferred under Prison Transfer Agreements to their home country to serve the remainder of their prison sentence. Most of these agreements are voluntary and rely on the consent of the foreign national offender which is often refused. Transfers between EU states will no longer require this consent from the end of 2014, but many EU countries have yet to implement the EU Prison Transfer Agreement. For instance, Poland, which has a large number of foreign national offenders in the UK, will not be required to receive compulsory transfers until December 2016.

Recommendation: The Home Office needs to assess which schemes work best in removing foreign national offenders early and quickly. The Department should revisit its current assumptions and expectations so that policy and resource decisions are evidence based, and reflect both political and practical issues. 

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