UK Borders Bill

We are holding these people because the Home Secretary said that we would. If there are particular bottlenecks that the hon. Gentleman wants to bring to my attention, I will of course look at them in detail. Let me tell him, however, the cause of one of those bottlenecks. It is the current provision for a foreign national prisoner to appeal against the deportation order once it has been served. About 72 per cent. of foreign national prisoners who are served with a deportation order go on to exercise their right to appeal to the immigration appeal tribunal—a process that is bureaucratic and cumbersome. One of the virtues of the Bill, which I hope the hon. Gentleman will support, is that the appeal must be heard from overseas. Where there are objections on human rights grounds, where someone challenges the Home Secretary’s determination that they are not a British national, or where someone challenges the fact that they have been given a 12-month sentence, we will now be able to certify those claims as clearly unfounded, so that we maximise the number of appeals that are heard not in this country but abroad.