To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) how many prisoners were detained at (a) Highdown and (b) Downview prisons on 1 July 2005; how many of these were foreign nationals; and how many had not had their nationalities determined; (68060)

Information on the prison population at Highdown and Downview as at 30 June 2005 is given in the following table.

There were approximately 190 foreign national prisoners in Highdown, and 130 foreign national prisoners in Downview, at the end of May 2006.

The figures have been drawn from the prisons administrative IT systems. Although care is taken when processing and analysing the returns, the detail collected is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large scale recording system.

Information on release dates of individual prisoners is not issued publicly.

As my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary made clear in his written ministerial statement of 23 May 2006, Official Report, column 79WS, all non-EEA nationals who are given a custodial sentence should face deportation; and deportation should happen as early as possible in that sentence. He set out the eight priority areas in this area to achieve this objective which he has asked management to address.