The British government announced plans on Wednesday to deport virtually all foreign convicts in a bid to defuse a scandal that threatens to damage the governing Labour Party’s results in local elections.
”I think it’s now time that anybody who is convicted of an imprisonable offence and who is a foreign national is deported,” Prime Minister Tony Blair told a raucous parliamentary session on the eve of the polls.
Thursday’s elections to more than 4 000 English local authority seats are a key test for Blair’s government, which opinion polls show is perceived by Britons as mired in sleaze and incompetence following nine years in power.
Poor results would increase the pressure on Blair to name the day when he will step down, as he has pledged to do before his third term in office runs out.
Speaking to the House of Commons, both Blair and his embattled Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, insisted that the scandal over foreign prisoners had dated back to previous governments.
”This system has not worked properly for decades. It is actually working now,” Blair told a jeering opposition as he defended Clarke from fresh calls to resign over the release of 1 023 foreign prisoners.
”We have to work through the backlog of cases, which we will do, but it is completely wrong to say that this problem was created or begun by this home secretary,” Blair said during the weekly prime minister’s questions session.
Conservative opposition leader David Cameron dismissed Blair’s response. ”People listening to that answer will, frankly, think it pathetic,” he said. ”This scandal has happened on his watch and he cannot run away from responsibility for it.”
Clarke unleashed a furore last week when he acknowledged that 1 023 foreign convicts who should have been considered for deportation after serving their sentences were instead released back into the community.
In announcing what Blair called a ”radical overhaul”, Clarke said he will publish a consultation paper by the end of May to set up a new system where foreign criminals ”should expect to be deported”.
Clarke added that of the 1 023 prisoners who were released by mistake, 574 cases were being considered for deportation, of which 554 have been completed. In all, 446 are to be deported, he said.
He also disclosed that the number of foreign convicts in British prisons had swelled to nearly 10 000 last year from 5 587 in 1987.
However, the Tories seized on the fact that Clarke disclosed that only 32 of the 79 most serious offenders have so far been tracked down.
With Clarke saying that deporting another nine has been ruled out, a Home Office spokesperson confirmed that the remaining 38 are still at large.
Saying the government has failed its primary mission to protect the public, the Conservative’s specialist on home affairs, David Davis, said Clarke’s proposals amount to ”bolting the prison door after the prisoners have fled”.
The disarray over deportation, a sex scandal engulfing Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott and the booing of Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt at a nurses’ conference have all come in the week before elections.
Analysts expect poor election results to trigger a Cabinet reshuffle and increase calls on Blair to outline steps for his departure after three consecutive terms in office.
Finance Minister Gordon Brown is widely tipped as Blair’s successor. — Sapa-AFP