𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Sometimes you hear a statistic so staggering it stops you in your tracks. So shocking you have to check it once, twice and then again just to be sure. And one bombshell figure is the perfect example of that.

Foreign nationals account for one in eight – 12.3% – of the 87,000 prisoners in England and Wales right now. One in eight. That’s not a dubious campaign claim, this terrifying stat is from the Ministry of Justice’s own data and it came into sharp focus after the horrific rape of a woman on Brighton Beach. Asylum seekers Ibrahim Alshafe, 25, Abdulla Ahmadi, 26, and Karin Al-Danasurt, 20, carried out what the prosecutor called a “cynical, predatory and callous” attack after a woman became separated from her friends on a night out.

Two of the men took her behind a beach hut and raped her. The third followed and filmed it. Evil. There’s no other word for it. So what happens next?

The Home Office has said that it will “move to deport” the Brighton gang rapists after sentencing. I think for crimes as disgusting as this, they should serve lengthy sentences and then be promptly kicked out.

But too often there is a pattern of offending long before prison – and that’s where the system is failing. In 2024, I reported on the case of an asylum seeker living in my home town of Middlesbrough, Arez Ali from Iraq, who committed a shocking spree of offences from drug dealing to leading police on a high-speed chase down the wrong side of a dual carriageway.

Eventually, the 31-year-old was banged up for four years at Durham Prison with the Home Office saying at the time that “foreign national offenders have no right to be in the UK”. But he is the perfect example of someone who should have been sent packing at the first sniff of criminality.

I decided to check in on Arez. Two years on, he is still here, released from prison and detained in an Immigration Removal Centre, and he “will be removed at the earliest possible opportunity”. But all the while, the costs are racking up.

Life behind bars does not come cheap. Each inmate costs a whopping £53k a year. Can you begin to imagine the entire cost of this? But it’s not just about the money.

Because while our jails are seemingly rammed with foreigners, it means that there isn’t enough space for the homegrown variety, who are running rampant thanks to Labour’s soft stance on so-called low-level crime. The type of crime that, in reality, cripples town centres as scumbags snatch what they want without consequences. Right now, it’s the foreign criminals who are laughing, whilst the agonisingly slow wheels turn – and we work hard to pick up the tab.

We need to stop dog testing now

I usually like my column to bring a little light into the world at some point… but today isn’t that day. The fight to outlaw animal testing on dogs – specifically beagles – goes on, with the folk of Camp Beagle and a number of prominent animal activists, including Meg Matthews, descending on Westminster for a debate.

It was only recently that I learned about this heartbreaking abuse of dogs who are kept in cages and used for medical testing. You may have read about it in the Express last week.

The government’s response is the same as it has been previously, saying that the use of animals for the development of products for human use remains necessary and that “does not agree” to end the practice. Instead, there is a longer-term plan to phase it out, which just isn’t good enough. We need this to stop, and now. Anything else is a total betrayal of our best friends.

God bless the King

King Charles played an absolute blinder in America last week. At a time when tensions between us and our closest ally threatened to bubble over amid the backdrop of the Iran conflict, the King managed to do what politicians often cannot – smooth things over with grace, dignity and, perhaps surprisingly, brilliant wit and sharp sense of humour.

His son, Prince Harry, his daughter-in-law, Meghan Markle and their two children, his grandchildren, however, weren’t there to cheer them on in the country they now call home.

Families fall out, but the first step to reconciliation is often admitting you’ve made a mistake and showing humility by saying sorry. Sadly, with the Sussexes, I can’t see that happening any time soon.