Tom Pursglove – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Attorney General

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Tom Pursglove on 2016-04-08.

To ask the Attorney General, pursuant to the Answer of 23 March 2016 to Question 31332, if he will estimate the cost of collecting information on the nationality of offenders referred to the court.

Robert Buckland

The nationality of offenders referred to the court is not collated centrally.

The Ministry of Justice hold data on foreign nationals held in prisons in England and Wales and publish statistics quarterly. The data does not include those offenders who receive non-custodial sentences.

To obtain even the limited data which is held would require the consideration of the files in all cases over the past three years where the Court of Appeal increased a sentence of imprisonment previously imposed to ascertain if they contained sufficient information for the data to be requested from the Ministry of Justice.

The process that would have to be undertaken would incur costs above the current disproportionate cost threshold and would in any event only provide the nationality for a limited number of offenders referred to the court.