Text Size
Print
Email
International News
- Text Size
- Print
- Email
Attorney general says EU criminal database will help stop offenders entering the UK on visit to Nort
The UK is doing all it can to prevent foreign criminals entering the country – the attorney general said on a visit to Northampton today – as he outlined ways to tackle the country’s £300 million bill for foreign offenders.
Conservative MP for Kenilworth and Southam Jeremy Wright met judges at Northampton Crown Court yesterday to field questions from the law officials on issues such as funding and sentencing guidelines.
Speaking to the Chronicle and Echo after the question-and-answer session the government’s principle legal advisor said the Conservative administration is taking steps to address how it vets people entering the country.
Last month it was revealed taxpayers have forked out more than £300 million since 2009 on flights and ‘bribes’ to persuade foreign criminals and illegal immigrants to return to their home countries - which Northampton North MP Michael Ellis said was because of an “appalling legacy and the incompetence” left behind by the previous Labour government.
Mr Wright said the UK has now signed up to the European Criminal Records Information System, which gives the country access to the criminal records of European migrants.
He said: “The first question for us is how do you take action on those coming into this country - about whom you would like to know a bit more?
“What we have said is that we sign up to a measure that allows us to have access to European criminal records.
“But at the end of the day we need to make sure that criminals are caught and that they are prosecuted, and sentenced effectively as well.”
Mr Wright also reacted to suggestions that criminal sentencing in the UK had become too lenient in recent years.
In September a Northampton dad was spared jail despite police finding more than 20,000 indecent images of children on his computer.
But the attorney general said that on the whole ‘judges get it about right’.
“It’s very easy for us to say sentencing is becoming lenient,” he said. “When we might have only heard the prosecution evidence and not any of the mitigation.
“We have to remember a sentence does a number things.
“On one side it provides protection to the public, if a person is put in prison. But the aim is also to punish and rehabilitate offenders.
“Any sentencing judge needs to take those factors into account.”
2024 The Background Investigator. All Rights Reserved.