To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many foreign nationals were successfully deported due to committal of a criminal offence in the UK following completion of their prison term in each of the last five years. (124234)

On 14 June the chief executive of the Border and Immigration Agency wrote to the Home Affairs Committee to provide the most recent information available on the deportation of foreign national prisoners. In this letter the director reported that 2784 foreign national prisoners were deported or removed in the financial year 2006-07. A copy of this letter is available from the Library of the House.

Statistics on the deportation of foreign nationals were last published in 2002. This data are available through the Home Office’s Research Development and Statistics website at:

http://www.archive2.official-documents.co.uk/document/cm60/6053/6053.htm.

Published information on persons removed as a result of deportation action has not been available from 2003 onwards due to data quality issues. The Border and Immigration Agency is putting in place new systems to improve its data collection systems for the future in this area.