Prison Service officials are unable to say how many foreign criminals have been released from jails in Oxfordshire without being deported.

Home Office officials could not say how many of the 1,023 offenders freed in the UK without consideration for deportation since 1999 have been released from Bullingdon Prison, near Bicester.

Yesterday, Banbury MP Tony Baldry tabled two Parliamentary questions to Home Secretary Charles Clarke, following the admission that the foreign offenders had been freed, and that the whereabouts of the majority of them was now not known.

The total includes three murderers and nine rapists who can no longer be traced.

Mr Baldry said: "Charles Clarke says this is not a resigning matter - my response is, what is, under this Government?

"This is a systemic failure, and as David Blunkett, the former Home Secretary, says, heads should roll."

The two questions tabled by Mr Baldry were: * How many foreign prisoners have been released from Bullingdon Prison without being considered for deportation?

* Of the 107 of the 1,023 foreign nationals released from prison who should have been deported, whose whereabouts the Home Office know, how many has the Home Office identified as now living in Oxfordshire?

Mr Baldry added: "With the vast majority of these serious foreign offenders who have been released from prison, and who should have been deported, the Home Office simply has no idea where they are, so obviously they cannot tell us how many of them are now living in Oxfordshire.

"But I think, at the very least, they should give an indication of how many, if any, of those that they can identify are living in Oxfordshire."

Mr Baldry's spokesman Richard Blakeway said that the MP intervened last year in the cases of two foreign prisoners at Bullingdon who wanted to be deported after completing their sentences but remained in prison.

Mr Blakeway said: "They wanted to be deported but due to complete confusion at the Home Office, they remained in prison.

"Once Tony intervened, they were then deported."

When the Oxford Mail yesterday asked the Home Office how many of the prisoners had been released from Bullingdon Prison, a spokesman replied: "We do not have that information.

"We are working with the prison service, probation service and police using Immigration and Nationality Directorate records to collate information at the moment."