The British government is fighting an order to reveal how many foreign nationals were convicted of crimes in England and Wales, sparking heavy criticism, mostly from the right-wing, anti-immigration Reform UK, which has accused Labour of deliberately hiding migrant crime statistics.
The story goes back to June 2025, when the UK-based think tank Centre for Migration Control submitted a request for the figures under freedom of information laws. To protect offenders from identification, the group asked for every result below five to be suppressed. The request covers violence, sexual offences, drugs, arson, criminal damage, weapons, theft, and robbery between 2018 and 2024.
Nevertheless, the Ministry of Justice refused to comply with the request, citing privacy concerns and later arguing that extracting and checking the data would exceed the £600 FOI cost limit set under the Freedom of Information Act.
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) rejected those arguments as justification for withholding all of the requested data. It said the department had failed to provide a properly evidenced cost estimate, while accepting that very small figures could indeed create privacy risks. It nevertheless ruled that the results of five or more should be disclosed.
The Ministry of Justice has now appealed the ICO’s ruling, asking the First-tier Tribunal to overturn the decision.
The decision sparked immediate backlash, with many accusing the government of deliberately hiding data on crime involving foreign nationals, pointing to a possible cover-up. Reform UK shadow home secretary Zia Yusuf alleged that both Conservative and Labour governments were working together to protect criminals over the British people and promised to release the data immediately if Reform entered office. Reform MP Robert Jenrick similarly accused the government of a cover-up, linking the issue to tougher deportation rules and greater scrutiny of foreign offenders.
The Ministry of Justice rejected those claims and said it would not comment on live proceedings in response to an inquiry from The Telegraph.
While the requested data concern nationality, not immigration status, birthplace, or route of entry, in practical terms, the populations overlap heavily. Most non-British nationals are likely to be people who moved to the UK, and the Office for National Statistics uses nationality as one measure of international migration. However, an immigrant who becomes a British citizen would appear as British in such a database.
Other European countries, such as Germany and Denmark, publish criminal data using nationality, citizenship, or country-of-origin categories. Britain releases narrower figures on foreign prisoners, removals, and some offence groups. However, it does not routinely publish comprehensive conviction tables.
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