OPINION – TIM NEWARK: Figures released so far are a wake-up call… but we need the entire picture to judge impact of uncontrolled immigration on UK
David Lammy’s former department is blocking publication of data on foreign criminalsi (Image: Anadolu via Getty)
It’s good news Justice Secretary David Lammy has been sacked by our new Prime Minister Andy Burnham. Lammy’s final efforts in post had been devoted to covering up the extent of foreign criminality imported into the UK. His department wanted to block the publication of foreign nationals’ offending rates.
The Ministry of Justice was taking legal action to block a ruling by the Information Commissioner that data revealing the full scale of foreign offending between 2018 to 2024 in England and Wales should be made public. Amid claims of a cover-up, the MoJ claimed publishing data would cost too much money and risk breaching privacy laws. But how else can we judge the full impact of uncontrolled migration on our country?
The Information Commissioner had agreed that data should be revealed in response to a Freedom of Information request a year ago by the Centre for Migration Control calling for total transparency on convictions by nationality. The results, based on figures for sexual offences that have been published, are shocking.
Foreign nationals accounted for 23% of sex offences between 2021 and 2023, despite making up nine% of our population. Afghans and Eritreans were a staggering 20 times more likely to be convicted of sexual offences, while Romanians, Poles, Indians and Pakistanis were also high in the ranks of sex offences committed. Overall, according to data from the Police National Computer, foreign nationals were found to be 71% more likely to commit sex crimes than Britons.
To be honest, such alarming figures are hardly surprising when tens of thousands of young men are allowed to force their way into our country with hardly any way to check their identity, let alone their criminal backgrounds. Many ditch their passports and other identity papers and lie about their ages, names and countries of birth in order to claim asylum.
But it is not just criminal intent that arrives on our shores with undocumented young men, but a dramatic clash of cultures with many coming from countries where misogyny and sexual impropriety are widespread. Worse are those that blame our own liberal culture for their bad behaviour. Of course, not all new arrivals are hardened criminals.
But the arrival of anyone with sinister intent is the most worrying and dangerous aspect of uncontrolled mass migration and it is little wonder that local communities balk at the idea of concentrations of young illegal migrants being housed among them. It’s no surprise either that the government would rather this information not come out. They tried to bury past outbreaks of foreign criminality, with Pakistani-heritage rape gangs being the most notorious example.
The prison figures are also a wake-up call that the softly-softly approach of both Labour and Conservative governments is failing to protect us. Our current government swears that foreign criminals will be removed promptly after serving their sentences, but there are too many examples of them dodging deportation through loopholes in our law. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has struggled to rid our country of Rochdale rape gang leader Shabir Ahmed.
Going soft on such high-profile cases just encourages other foreign criminals to exploit our lax restrictions. Laughing in the face of our impotent laws, prolific Albanian burglar Dorian Puka recently fed his dogs banknotes in a video taunting our failure to kick him out. By restricting data on foreign criminals, perhaps the government hopes our legitimate concerns will disappear. But this is an appalling thing to do – burying information on a clear and present danger to us all.
The MoJ argues that it costs too much but it’s taxpayers’ money and giving us complete and accurate information on foreign criminality, compared to so much wasted money on other issues, seems good value. It shows the ongoing crisis of open borders must be solved quickly and effectively.
They also argue that too much information can lead to the identifying of certain individuals, violating their rights to privacy. Unlikely, says the Information Commissioner. Either way, ordinary Britons take a very dim view of protecting the rights of people who shouldn’t even be here in the first place and have already broken our laws. They should forfeit this right.
Having sacked Lammy, it can only be hoped Burnham and his new Justice Secretary Akex Norris come down hard on this cynical attempt by the MoJ to make it all go away. Freedom of Information requests are vital to our democracy because only then can other parties offer solutions to these dangers.
More than 10,000 foreign nationals are currently languishing in our prison cells, while a further 20,000 have avoided deportation and are living freely among us. That is clearly several thousand too many. And how many more criminals who have arrived in small boats are walking freely among us yet to offend again. We can’t even begin to guess.