The number of foreign criminals deported under Labour has increased by almost 75 per cent, Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy announced at the Justice Select Committee on Tuesday.
Some 5,430 foreign national offenders (FNOs) were returned between November 2024 and October 2025, compared to 4,861 in the previous year, representing a 12 per cent year-on-year growth. This includes both forced and voluntary returns.
Of those, 2,706 criminals were part of the Early Removal Scheme (ESR), up 75 per cent from 1,560 in the Conservatives' final full year in office, according to new Labour analysis of Ministry of Justice (MoJ) statistics.
Weekly removals under ESR - which allows prisoners to be removed from the country early - also rose to a weekly high of 114 in September, or 16 per day.
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The total number of foreign national offenders returned has increased by 14 per cent under Labour.
This year's ESR figures represent just over a 1.5 per cent increase from last year, though.
"This is Labour delivering not only an acceleration but a step-change in getting dangerous criminals out of our country," the Deputy Prime Minister said.
In August this year, Labour announced new, tougher plans to deport foreign criminals after 30 per cent of their sentence, as opposed to the typical 50 per cent.
Justice Secretary David Lammy announced that the number of foreign criminals deported under Labour has increased by almost 75 per cent,
|REUTERS
Shabana Mahmood, who proposed the new law, is estimated to have saved the taxpayers an average of £54,000 per prison spot.
"Our message is clear - if you abuse our hospitality and break our laws, we will send you packing," Ms Mahmood said at the time.
"Deportations are up under this government, and with this new law they will happen earlier than ever before."
Jake Richards, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Sentencing, Youth Justice and International, said the Government is taking "radical action to deport foreign criminals".
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Earlier this year, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood proposed tougher plans to deport foreign criminals after 30 per cent of their sentence, as opposed to the typical 50 per cent
| PA"Deportations are up and our changes are ensuring they happen earlier and faster than before," he said.
"We will go further by rebalancing how human rights law is applied at home, and pursuing change internationally, to ensure offenders cannot abuse our laws.
"Labour said we would deport more foreign criminals, and we meant it."
The focus on FNOs comes as UK prisons face an unprecedented crisis.
Recent prison figures show that the UK's population behind bars is now 87,063, leaving just 2,287 free prison spaces in England and Wales
| GETTYSome 10,772 foreign nationals were in custody in June this year, according to MoJ data. That represents around 12 per cent of the total prison population.
And current data on the prison population paints a bleak picture. With a total population of 87,063, just 2,287 prison spaces are left in England and Wales.
With the population behind bars expected to rise to 103,600 by March 2030, according to MoJ figures, this means that an additional 14,250 spaces will be required within five years to accommodate the expected number of inmates, and would leave zero headroom.
On Tuesday, Mr Lammy told MPs that "our prisons are in a dire state" and said that removing foreign national offenders from the estate "is a subject that the public care a lot about".
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