Hundreds of foreign convicts to stay in UK
What else should we expect from this lot :wall:
Quote:
About 200 foreign convicts freed by the Home Office in the prisoner release fiasco will be allowed to stay in Britain, the head of the Immigration Service admitted today.
Lin Homer told the Commons Home Affairs Committee that an "initial decision" not to deport had been taken in "a couple of hundred" cases out of the 1,019 foreign prisoners released by the Home Office instead of being considered for deportation.
During a stormy encounter, Ms Homer also told MPs that eight offenders who had committed murder, rape or child sex crimes were still on the loose nearly two months after blunders first emerged.
She said she was also unable to say how many of another 83 serious offenders previously known to be at large were now in detention.
In further admissions Ms Homer said that "tens" of mentally ill foreign nationals had either been freed or were due for imminent release from secure psychiatric hospitals.
She also warned that it would take years before the Immigration and Nationality Directorate, which she heads, would be performing properly and stunned MPs by claiming that one solution to her department's problems would be to recruit more managers.
The admissions will renew the pressure on Home Secretary John Reid over the prisoner release fiasco and seriously undermines Tony Blair's promise that all foreign convicts should be deported.
The Prime Minister told MPs soon after the blunders first emerged that he was determined that there should be a presumption that all foreign offenders were removed from the country as soon as they had served their sentence.
Mr Blair later sought to qualify his pledge and today Ms Homer disclosed that about 200 of the 1,019 convicts at the centre of the current row were set to remain in the country.
"We have looked at about a couple of hundred where the initial decision was not to deport," she told MPs, adding that all cases were being double checked and that some of the decisions might be reversed upon further consideration.
Asked, however, by Tory MP Richard Spring whether 200 was an accurate "ballpark figure" the number who were likely to be allowed to remain, Miss Homer replied: "Yes, that's right."
