Any foreign national convicted of a crime in the UK should be deported to restore confidence in the borders and end the prison crisis, the Tories declared. The Conservatives have vowed to lower the threshold for removal to “any criminal conviction”. And foreign criminals will be barred from making asylum claims or seeking humanitarian protection. Labour has also vowed to overhaul deportation laws, with anyone convicted of a criminal offence now considered for removal.
The threshold had previously been set at 12 months. The Tories, setting out their plan to restore control of the borders, said: “Foreign criminals should be deported and never allowed to return. We will therefore lower the criminal threshold for automatic deportation to any criminal conviction (with exceptions only for the most trivial penalties such as parking or minor speeding offences).
“Foreign criminals must be deported directly from prison as soon as they become eligible for deportation and must not be released onto our streets where they would pose a danger to the British public.
“No protection claims at all will be allowed for those being deported as a foreign criminal, subject only to the Home Secretary’s exceptional discretion.”
A record number of foreign thugs, thieves and sex offenders are costing taxpayers more than £360million a year, shocking analysis has revealed.
Some 10,772 overseas nationals are languishing in overcrowded jails.
This includes 6,673 criminals serving sentences and 3,781 people on remand.
Almost half of foreign prisoners have been locked up for violent and sexual crimes, analysis of Ministry of Justice figures has revealed.
Labour has changed the law to allow criminals to be deported after serving just 30% of their sentence in the UK. It had been 50%.
And new legislation will allow ministers to deport foreign offenders as soon as they are sentenced.
Shadow Home Secretary on Sunday declared that Britain should deport foreigners who promote extremist views on the streets.
He said: “We don’t want the fear and intimidation on our streets. I would also say that if anyone in this country … who is not a British citizen, expresses extremist views or supports terrorism, those are not the kind of people we want in this country, and they should be, frankly, deported.”
He was asked by Trevor Phillips on Sky News: “Would they be amongst 150,000 deportees that you’re planning?”
Mr Philp said: “Well, potentially yes, they would, we don’t want extremism. We don’t want support for terrorism in this country.
“You’re referring to our new plan, the borders plan that we’re launching today. It is a detailed and comprehensive plan to get control of this country’s borders. Labour is presiding over a border crisis. This year so far, has been the worst in history for illegal immigrants crossing the channel. We’ve seen some terrible cases of crime.
“Some of those people have gone on to commit, including, rape, including child abuse.”
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has said pro-Palestine demonstrators are abusing their right to protest and that many people at the marches are “actually out to intimidate Jews”.
She told Camilla Tominey on GB News: “I think the fact that they were marching on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, shows that many of the people going on these marches are actually out to intimidate Jews and I think that that’s something that should be stopped.
“We have a right to protest in this country, but people are abusing those rights. Rights come with responsibilities.
“What I would say to what the Government has announced is: what took you so long? Every time we try to do these things in government, they opposed it.”