At the end of March 2007, the latest period for which data are available, 2,919 prisoners serving immediate custodial sentences gave their nationality as that of one of those countries with which the United Kingdom has a prisoner transfer arrangement. Of these around 2,000 prisoners appear to meet the basic criteria for repatriation. That is; they are a national of a country with which we have a prisoner transfer arrangement, their sentence is final and enforceable, and they have more than the relevant period left to serve as specified in the applicable international arrangement.
Under our existing repatriation arrangements repatriation is a voluntary process and requires the consent of both states involved, as well as that of the prisoner concerned, before repatriation can take place.
These figures have been drawn from administrative IT systems. Care is taken when processing and analysing the returns but the detail collected is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large scale recording system, and so although shown to the last individual, the figure may not be accurate to that level.
The figures given relate to England and Wales only.
In my answer of 16 May 2007, Official Report, column 808W, I indicated that work is being undertaken to identify those countries with which we already have bilateral prisoner transfer arrangements who may be willing to renegotiate those arrangements to remove the requirement for prisoners to consent to transfer. This is in addition to the EU negotiations and those with the Council of Europe, which concern multi-party agreements. The work is being taken forward in conjunction with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Direct discussions with the governments concerned have not yet taken place.