Plan B Forum

Ken Clarke last night admitted the Government had not completed a single prisoner transfer agreement to get rid of foreign criminals since coming to power 18 months ago.

Jails are crowded with overseas inmates, with officials struggling to deport them at the end of their sentence. But, despite claiming they would tackle the problem, the Justice Secretary said no other countries had agreed to take back their convicts since May last year. The only new deal in place is an EU-wide prisoner transfer agreement which comes into force next month.

Mr Clarke said there was only one case where negotiations were close to completing a deal. In a Commons question to the Justice Secretary, his Labour shadow Sadiq Khan said the new agreement with the EU – signed in 2007 under Labour – would make it impossible for a detainee's native country to refuse a request to take him back and the prisoner's consent for deportation would not be required.

Turning to Mr Clarke, Mr Khan added: 'The Prime Minister promised the repatriation of thousands of prisoners by personally taking charge of negotiations with individual countries. We all know he likes to keep his promises. Can you tell us how many new prisoner transfer agreements with individual countries have been successfully negotiated over the last 18 months? How many foreign prisoners do you expect to be repatriated this year?'

Mr Clarke replied: 'You hit on a very serious problem. We really do have to find some way of reducing the foreign prisoner population. 'We only at the moment have one international bi-lateral agreement that is near to coming to a conclusion but we are continuing to work on it because [foreign prisoners] take up 10 per cent of places in our prison system.'

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... Justice Secretary said no other countries had agreed to take back their convicts since May last year. ... "