Estonia rejects proposals to take prisoners from UK jails

Other parties have come up with their own ideas for dealing with overcrowding in prisons.

At a news conference on Monday, Reform UK suggested 10,000 prison spaces could be freed up if all foreign criminals were sent abroad to serve their sentences.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said his party was exploring options to transfer foreign criminals in the UK to prisons in other countries, including El Salvador and Kosovo.

When asked if he had other countries in mind, Farage said: “Yes there are Baltic state options as well.

“I mean, conversations could certainly be had with Lithuania, for example, or perhaps Estonia as well.”

A Reform UK spokesman said its policy was focused on El Salvador, Kosovo and “possibly others if they are open to the idea”.

In recent days, the Conservatives have also urged Burnham to revive their plan to rent prison cells overseas, a policy they introduced when the party was in government in 2023.

The proposal aimed to mirror models used by Norway and Belgium in the Netherlands, where both countries rented cells to deal with overcrowding in their prisons.

Conservative shadow home secretary Chris Philp said this was “an idea that we legislated for in government but Labour subsequently did not pursue that”.

“That was a catastrophic mistake by the Labour government that should be urgently reversed.”

The Conservatives did not respond to requests to comment on Estonia’s rejection of a prison rental deal with the UK.

In a statement, Lithuania’s Ministry of Justice said “There have been no discussions or consultations regarding the possibility of accepting the transfer of all Lithuanian citizens imprisoned in the United Kingdom”.

A spokesperson said the Lithuanian government did not “see any scope for entering into practical arrangements of this kind”.

The Kosovo government, which has agreed to lease 300 of its jail cells to Denmark as part of a deal worth £170m (€200m), appeared more open to working with other countries on prisoner transfers.

A Kosovo government spokesperson said: “We value the willingness of partner countries to initiate and advance new co-operation initiatives that serve common interests, mutual priorities, and the strengthening of international justice mechanisms”.

But the spokesperson stressed Kosovo would focus on enacting its deal with Denmark “before entering into any new agreement of a similar nature”.

The BBC has previously been told both former Conservative and Labour ministers independently came to the view that renting prison space abroad would be expensive.

Sweden has agreed to pay up to £52m (€61m) a year to Estonia if the Baltic nation does house 600 of its offenders at the Tartu prison.

Estonia said from the 301st inmate onwards, Sweden would pay an additional £7,254 (€8,500) per prisoner, per month.

The average annual cost per prisoner in a public-sector prison in England and Wales was £60,018 in 2024/25, according to Ministry of Justice data.