Robert Jenrick hails 'victory' on campaign to reveal the truth about migrant criminals

Top Tory Robert Jenrick has declared victory on a campaign demanding the Home Office publish migrant crime league tables, saying Britons “deserve the truth”. Yvette Cooper has conceded the argument, and ordered her department to publish a detailed breakdown of what nationalities are committing the highest number of crimes.

The data will come by the end of the year, and will provide a greater insight into the state of Britain’s multicultural society. In a statement, the Home Office said it is working to improve the recording of data held on foreign national offenders (FNOs) and upgrade IT systems in order to allow the publication of the statistics. It pledged: “Breakdowns of this data, such as statistics on the type of offences committed by FNOs subject to immigration powers, or their nationalities, will be prepared as ‘experimental statistics’ due to them being derived from a redesigned data system.”

It is understood Ms Cooper had to overrule obstructive mandarins in order to force the publication, with civil servants previously claiming that collating such data would be too difficult.

Robert Jenrick, the Tories’ Shadow Justice Secretary, described the announcement as a “victory” for his campaign.

He said: “Following over a year of pressure from campaigners, including my own attempt to change the law, it appears that there’s been a breakthrough.”

“The British public deserve the truth about migrant crime and the costs of low-skilled immigration.”

“The cover up is coming to an end. We’ll finally see the hard reality, that mass migration is fuelling crime across out country.

“Frankly the public deserved to know this long ago.”

A Labour source hit back: “Not only are we deporting foreign criminals at a rate never seen when Chris Philp and Robert Jenrick were in charge at the Home Office, but we will also be publishing far more information about that cohort of offenders than the Tories ever did.”

The published data will also reveal the breakdown of offences committed by foreign criminals awaiting deportation.

Freedom of Information requests by the Centre for Migration Control suggest African, Middle Eastern and Eastern European countries will come out top of the list.

Across all crimes committed by FNOs, Albanians were convicted of 7,653 crimes between 2021 and 2023, a rate of 4027.89 crimes per 10,000 residents.

This data suggests the average Albanian living in Britain is 30 times more likely to be a criminal than a British citizen.

Moldovans had a crime rate of 1662.5 per 10,000 residents, while the Congo registered 1583.33.

Afghanistan had a crime rate of 1023.08 over the two year period, with Iraq scoring 930.

Labour has already claimed that the Home Office previously underestimated the number of foreign criminals living in communities while awaiting deportation.

An investigation by the new government into the data prompted a 30% revision up this February, from 11,266 to 14,640.

A Home Office source said: “Any foreign national who abuses our country’s hospitality and commits serious crimes should be in no doubt that they will face the full force of the law, and be removed from the UK at the earliest opportunity.

“But we also want to ensure the public is kept better informed about the number of foreign criminals awaiting deportation, where they are from, and the crimes they have committed.

“That is why – for the first time – ministers have tasked officials specifically with producing a greater range of data on this category of offenders, and ensuring that data is published in future in an open and transparent way.”

However the move has sparked backlash from pro-migrant lobbyists, including claims it will lead to “further demonisation of new arrivals to the UK”.

James Wilson, the director of charity Detention Action which supports migrants in immigration detention, said: “It is unclear what the government hopes to achieve by publishing this data in this way, but the dangers are very clear.”

“Less than a year after the anti-asylum riots, the government risks feeding further division, dehumanisation and prejudice in our communities.

“It is the role of the criminal justice system to prosecute individuals, not whole communities.”