UK taxpayers are forking out £629 million a year to house 10,487 foreign national offenders in British prisons — a bill that could pay for 16,500 police officers or 15,000 NHS nurses.
While Labour claims it’s deporting record numbers, an ex-prison governor has torn into the “staggering” cost and the “incredibly slow process” that leaves dangerous foreign criminals draining public resources instead of being sent home.
This is the direct result of years of open-borders policies that prioritise criminals’ “rights” over British safety.
Reform UK’s Prisons Adviser and former prison governor Vanessa Frake laid it out clearly on GB News. “The cost to this country for foreign national prisoners is staggering,” she said. “It’s a very long, drawn-out process, which kind of goes from three main areas.”
Frake detailed the excuses that keep foreign offenders here: “The problem is a lack of identity documents for these people. Quite often they get rid of their passports, so the Home Office then has to write to the country that they originate from, and that process is very slow.”
“Sometimes the country refuses. And there are of course the ECHR claims. Those under Article 8, right to life, right to family for those who have family in this country and of course, there is administration errors as well,” Frake further explained.
She added that even recent deals fall short. “They’ve just done a deal with Albania to send 200 prisoners back, but that comes with certain conditions, like improving their prison service, giving them electric Volkswagens, etcetera.”
Frake noted the daily cost disparity: “It costs something like £109 a day in this country to keep a foreign national in prison, and we’re going to give the Albanians £32 a day, so it’s still not quick.”
Albania tops the list of foreign national prisoners, followed by Ireland and Poland. Yet Frake’s blunt conclusion was that Britain can’t simply load them onto planes. “We’re not going to get away with it by just putting them on a plane, we’ve got to persuade these countries to take these individuals back.”
This isn’t an isolated failure. It’s the pattern. Britain has repeatedly let violent offenders and known extremists stay or walk free despite clear red flags.
Take the most recent case of a Somali terrorist in London who previously stabbed police officers, and was a known extremist.
Essa Suleiman, who arrived as a child and holds British citizenship, was convicted in 2008 for stabbing two officers and a police dog. Referred to Prevent in 2020 as an extremist, he was still free to attempt to murder two Jewish people in Golders Green last month.
[Somali Terrorist In London Previously Stabbed Police Officers, Was A Known Extremist]
