Foreign criminals cost taxpayers £10 million

Friday, 30 January 2009 12:00 AM

By Laura Miller

Government failure to deport foreign criminals quickly costs taxpayers £10 million a year in extended detentions, a Tory immigration spokesman has said.

Nearly 1,200 ex-prisoners are being held in UK detention centres - at a cost of about £47,500 each a year, he said.

"The taxpayer is being fleeced yet again to pay for failures in the government's immigration policy."

He criticised ministers for not having tackled the problem by automatically deporting prisoners, as they had pledged.

"Gordon Brown promised 'automatic deportation' of foreign criminals, but we have nearly 1,200 of them locked up very expensively in centres not designed to hold hardened criminals," said Damian Green.

He blames riots and fires at detention centres in recent years on the long periods criminals are held there, which he said gave them the opportunity to become the dominant group inside.

Last month ministers said 5,000 prisoners had been deported in the last year in line with their most recent target.

Detaining people in immigration centres costs nearly £10,000 more per person than the cost of keeping people in prison, according to the Conservatives.

In 2006 John Reid, declared parts of the detention system "not fit for purpose" and led an overhaul of procedures after Charles Clarke lost his job as home secretary when 1,000 foreign criminals were shown to have been released from prison without being considered for deportation.

The UK Border Agency said it had met last month's "tough target" to remove at least 5,000 foreign criminals, and promised staff were working in prisons to speed up deportations.

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• policing and crime