4,000 foreign prisoners deported

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The figure represented a 50% increase on last year, officials said.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said: "Foreign law breakers should be first in line for the first plane out of Britain.

"We promised to remove 4,000 foreign national prisoners this year and we meant it."

The total includes more than 20 people convicted of killings, more than 200 sex offenders and more than 1,100 drug offenders.

Mr Brown announced the new target in July in an attempt to alleviate pressure on the overcrowded prison system by accelerating the removals process.

Foreign national prisoners can remain locked up in detention centres once their sentences are complete while they await deportation.

Shadow home secretary David Davis said that the numbers being removed were equal to the numbers who would escape deportation because their sentences were less than 12 months.

"The Government should not crow about meeting this artificially set target. The Government is replicating the problem they are claiming to have solved," he said.

"In addition, over 500 foreign prisoners have been released early by this Government and our prisons are still at bursting point with record levels of foreign prisoners in them. Gordon Brown's claim that 'If you commit a crime you will be deported from our country' remains a piece of cynical spin."