UK Police Check on Foreign Nationals Criminal Records Far From 60% Target

British police have checked eight and six percent of detained foreign nationals in Greater Manchester and Cleveland respectively instead of 60 percent as it was targeted, according to media.

MOSCOW, December 13 (Sputnik) — Criminal records of foreign nationals coming into the United Kingdom often go unchecked with only eight and six percent looked into in Greater Manchester and Cleveland respectively, the BBC reported Saturday.

Greater Manchester arrested 6,836 foreign nationals last year, while 966 suspect were arrested in Cleveland. The local police checked the criminal records of only eight percent and six percent of those detained respectively, the BBC 5 Live Investigates program found.

According to the BBC, a nationwide target was set to check at least 60 percent of arrested foreigners from within the European Union.

However, the police said the United Kingdom was doing better than other European Union countries, according to BBC 5 Live.

"The force accepts that vast improvements need to be made and work has already begun to address this issue. Our ultimate target is to achieve 100% compliance and it is an absolute priority for me to increase our rate of referrals [to the Association of Chief Police Officers' Criminal Records Office (Acro)],” Chief Inspector Steve Young of Cleveland was quoted as saying by BBC.

An October report by the UK National Audit Office (NAO), a government spending watchdog, uncovered that the country's police had only checked criminal records of 30 percent of arrested foreign nationals. Tony Evans of the NAO told BBC that one in three of the checks came back with the result that the foreign national had a serious criminal history.

Most recently, the UK chief border inspector John Vine revealed on Thursday that the UK Home Office granted the country's citizenship to a criminal who had stabbed someone in their home country because of inadequate criminal record checks, as reported by BBC.