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Blair: Cons will be deported
03/05/2006 22:46 - (SA)
London - The British government announced plans to deport foreign convicts on Wednesday, in a bid to defuse a scandal threatening to damage the governing Labour Party's results in local elections.
"I think it's now time that anybody who is convicted of an imprisonable offence and who is a foreign national is deported," Prime Minister Tony Blair told a raucous parliamentary session on the eve of the polls.
Thursday's elections to more than 4 000 English local authority seats are a key test for Blair's government.
In opinion polls this week, Brits said Blair is mired in sleaze and incompetence after nine years in power.
Poor results would increase the pressure on Blair to name the day when he will step down - as he has pledged to do before his third term in office runs out.
Speaking to the British house of commons, Blair and his embattled home secretary Charles Clarke insisted the scandal over foreign prisoners had dated back to previous governments.
'The system works now'
"This system has not worked properly for decades. It is actually working now," Blair told a jeering opposition.
He was defending Clarke from fresh calls to resign, after 1 023 foreign convicts - who should have been considered for deportation after serving their sentences - were released back into the community.
Conservative opposition leader David Cameron dismissed Blair's response: "People listening to that answer will, frankly, think it pathetic.
"This scandal has happened on his watch and he cannot run away from responsibility for it."
Clarke said he would publish a consultation paper by the end of May, to set up a new system where foreign criminals "should expect to be deported".
32 released serious offenders tracked down
Clarke 554 of the prisoners' deportation cases were completed, and 446 were to be deported.
Only 32 of the 79 most serious offenders have been tracked down so far.
Conservative's specialist on home affairs, David Davis said Blair's government had failed its primary mission to protect the public, and that Clarke's proposals amounted to "bolting the prison door after the prisoners have fled".
The disarray over deportation, a sex scandal engulfing British Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, and the booing of the country's health secretary Patricia Hewitt at a nurses' conference have all come in the week before elections.
Analysts expect poor election results to trigger a cabinet reshuffle and increase calls on Blair to outline steps for his departure.
Finance minister Gordon Brown is widely tipped as Blair's successor.
- AFP
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