Clarke tightens rules on foreign prisoners

All foreign prisoners found guilty of serious crimes will be automatically assumed eligible for deportation, the home secretary has announced.

Charles Clarke admitted the changes, which will be outlined in a consultation document later this month, were controversial, but said they would resolve the problem of some foreign nationals being released unintentionally into the community.

The announcement failed to silence the home secretary's critics on the opposition benches, however, who have been calling for him to resign ever since he admitted that 1,023 foreign prisoners had been released without being considered for deportation.

Shadow home secretary David Davis insisted that the answer was "not more laws, and its certainly not more headlines – the answer is a more competent home secretary".

And Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Nick Clegg warned: "We will not welcome these measures if they prove to be a knee-jerk reaction designed to grab the headlines rather than offenders, and to get the government out of its self-inflicted fiasco."

Mr Clarke was today giving an update to MPs on the progress made by the Home Office in tracking down the 1,023 prisoners released over the past seven years, which he revealed in a written statement to the House of Commons last Wednesday.

He said 554 cases had already been considered for deportation and 446 of these individuals would be deported. Of the most serious 79 cases, 70 were to be deported – although 38 of these had not yet been tracked down by police.

But while action was being taken to deal with what had been an "unedifying episode for all of us in the Home Office", the home secretary said detailed proposals on how to change the system in the future were also to be published shortly.

These would introduce a "clear assumption that deportation will follow unless there are special circumstances", he said. This would apply to all foreign nationals found guilty of sex offences, recommended for deportation by a judge or facing a sentence of at least a year.

Earlier, Tony Blair defended the proposals, insisting: "It is not just a question of [dealing with] the existing system, but of making sure the system is radically overhauled so that those convicted of a serious offence are deported automatically."

Speaking during prime minister's questions, he added: "If we don't do that, then we may consider all the cases in time but we won't deport all the people who need to be deported."

However, there were still widespread calls for Mr Clarke to resign over the row, with a variety of MPs remarking on what they saw as a "new ministerial code of conduct" where offending ministers are allowed to stay around to deal with their own incompetence.

"The home secretary is trying to make a virtue out of the fact that he has told us the facts when in truth he was forced by the public accounts committee to admit his failure, and had to be dragged before the House to answer for it," Mr Davis said.