By Philip Johnston
Labour was accused yesterday of secretly planning a network of prisons for foreign nationals after it emerged that two jails now held only inmates from overseas.
The policy has been running for more than a year without parliament being informed.
The
two prisons, in Bullwood Hall, Essex, and Canterbury, could be the
first of a dozen to hold only overseas prisoners. This could make it
simpler to remove them from the country when they have finished their
sentences.
The disclosure focused renewed attention on the rapid rise in the number of foreign prisoners. There are currently 11,000 – amounting to a seventh of the overall population in England and Wales.
They are one of the main drivers of the overcrowding crisis that has pushed the total above 80,000.
The prison population is now made up of people from 164 different countries.
In the Commons on Wednesday, Gordon Brown said he was seeking agreements with several overseas governments to take back their prisoners.
''We will do more by signing agreements with countries like Jamaica which have 1,400 foreign prisoners in British cells; Nigeria, which has more than 1,000 foreign prisoners in British cells; Vietnam and China — 400 and 300 prisoners in British cells," he said.
"We will sign agreements with these countries so we can return prisoners as expeditiously as possible."
However, similar agreements already exist with more than 100 countries and yet the number of foreign prisoners continues to rise.
A deal was reached last year whereby EU nationals could serve their sentences in their own countries but has yet to be implemented. This would remove about 2,000 from British jails, though 800 British criminals in jail elsewhere in the EU would be repatriated.
The annual cost of keeping 11,000 foreign inmates is nearly £350 million. Just removing the Jamaican prisoners would save £49 million a year.
News of the dedicated foreign prisons came in a report from Anne Owers, the chief inspector, about mental health issues.
Nick Herbert, the shadow justice secretary, said: "It might make sense to house foreign national prisoners separately but why were we not officially told about this?"
The reasons behind the rise in foreign prisoners are the high levels of immigration in recent years and rising drug trafficking. Prison Service figures show that the vast majority, especially women, have committed drug offences.
If there were not so many foreign inmates, there would not be a population crisis in the prisons. In 1996, there were fewer than 5,000 overseas prisoners and the scale of the increase in foreign nationals has far outstripped the rise in British inmates.
Apart from the two foreign-only jails, there are two prisons – Verne, in Dorset, and Morton Hall, Lincs – where foreign nationals make up half of the population. In a further 16 jails, they make up a quarter of the total.
The Government was reviewing whether to create more prisons just for foreigners.
Main nationalities in our jails:
Jamaica 1,464
Nigeria 1,061
Irish Republic 653
Pakistan 419
Vietnam 406
Somalia 356
India 315
China 312
Poland 312
Iraq 264
Turkey 225
South Africa 210
Ghana 207
Iran 194
Zimbabwe 194
Algeria 193
Lithuania 191
Portugal 183
France 170
Sri Lanka 169
Bangladesh 167
Romania 150
Albania 148
Netherlands 132
Germany 129
Columbia 124
Russia 113
Congo 111
Italy 106
USA 103
SOURCE: Telegraph, October 25,2007