Early Removal of Fixed-Term Prisoners (Amendment of Eligibility Period) Order 2008

My Lords, the people for whom I feel sorry are the prison governors who have to read and digest the complicated provisions of this early-release scheme, which are detailed in a 70-page document, Early Removal Scheme for Foreign Nationals, which is now being amended by these two orders. I have no complaint to make about the orders themselves, and I think that my noble kinsman has been a little hard on the Government. We are always complaining that they have done nothing about the bursting prisons, and now they are doing something. But I suppose he is entitled to have a little bit of fun. At the end of the day, it is a good thing that these orders are being made now and that they come along as early as possible. We are looking at an uncontroversial scheme, which has, so far, allowed fixed-term prisoners to be removed to their countries of origin 135 days before the half-way point of their sentence, with tapering for short-term prisoners at between three and 18 months. As the Minister has explained, under these orders a foreign national can be removed from prison 270 days before the half-way mark, with those sentenced to less than three years having to serve a quarter of their nominal sentence. The lower limit of three months originally applied to the ERS is removed. That is an improvement because those people were not formerly eligible for any release. Obviously, the scheme applies only to those who are capable of being removed or deported to their country of origin. The Explanatory Memoranda do not say to how many of the 11,310 foreign nationals in our prisons at the time of writing, who the noble Lord mentioned, this scheme will apply. We hope that the noble Lord will tell us what increase there will be in the number of prisoners affected, based on the current number of prisoners, as a result of the extension from 135 to 270 days. The chief executive of the BIA wrote to the chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee in another place on 20 November 2007. He said that 1,500 foreign national prisoners whose sentences had expired were awaiting deportation. It would be useful if that figure were updated. In spite of the claim that the experience of the past three and a half years has been successful, the 3,000 removed under the early release scheme since it began in June 2004 is presumably some way short of the number eligible for deportation or removal. It would be useful to have some assessment of what proportion of the total that would represent. What are the obstacles to deportation of the 1,500 who are still detained? In her evidence to the Select Committee on 15 January, Ms Homer, the chief executive of the BIA, said that it would automatically consider deportation for anyone given a custodial sentence unless there was an appeal. What proportion of foreign national prisoners in custody who would otherwise have been subject to ERS are excluded from the procedure because their appeals have not yet been concluded? Does this account for some of the 1,500 in administrative detention, or are they all from the countries where difficulties arise, such as the four particularly mentioned by Ms Homer: Jamaica, Nigeria, China and Vietnam? Do those difficulties arise mainly from the expiry, loss or destruction of travel or identity documents by the persons concerned? Presumably the prisoners who qualify for ERS are told clearly that if they appeal either against sentence or deportation, it can mean that they will have to remain in custody for part or even the whole of the 270 days’ freedom back home they would otherwise have enjoyed? If that is the choice facing those prisoners—to accept the ERS or resist it and lose some of the time for which they would otherwise have been freed—can the noble Lord assure me that they will have available to them the best legal advice so that they can make the decision on the best possible grounds?